by Jane Smiley
“What?” said Debbie suspiciously.
“Let’s hide the eggs.”
“The Easter Bunny did that.”
Timmy, who could reach the handle of the refrigerator, opened it and pointed to the bowl of eggs on the bottom shelf. Debbie said, “They’re white.”
“So?” He removed one from the bowl and handed it to Dean, who balanced it on his palm. He said, “Come on, Deano, let’s hide the egg!” Dean threw down his bottle, which Debbie picked up, and gave his hand to Timmy. Debbie followed them into the dining room and then the living room with a sinking heart. Timmy pointed to the corner of the sofa and said, “There’s a good place.”
Dean carefully set the egg in the corner, and backed away. Timmy said, “Let’s get another one!”
They disappeared into the kitchen. Debbie put her fingertip on the egg but was afraid to grab it. They came back with two eggs this time. Dean put one in the toy box and the other one by the leg of the bookcase. When they went back to the kitchen, Debbie removed her Raggedy Ann doll from the toy box.
Pretty soon, the boys had set more eggs than Debbie could count around the living room, some in better hiding places than others. Timmy had finished most of his bunny, and had dropped the rest on the floor in the kitchen. He had also spilled some of his jelly beans, but Dean had sat down on the floor and eaten those—had colored bits in the corner of his mouth. When Mommy and Daddy appeared in the doorway between the living room and the dining room, Timmy was kneeling on a dining-room chair, sifting through the paper grass in his Easter basket, and Dean was sitting on the table, the smallest of the baskets across his bare legs. He had taken some of the foil off the bunny and tried it, but he didn’t like it. It lay next to him. Debbie had removed her basket from the area entirely and put it in the closet. She had not touched any of the candy, but she had claimed the stuffed bunny, and was holding it. Mommy said, “Goodness, what a mess!”
It was Daddy who sat on the first egg, the one in the corner of the sofa. Debbie saw him, but didn’t say anything until he said, “What the—?” and sat forward. Yellow gunk was stuck to his shorts and dripping over shards of eggshell on the couch. Mommy started laughing. Dean sat up on his knees and started laughing, too. Daddy leaned forward and stepped on the egg under the coffee table. “Uh-oh,” he said, “minefield.”
Mommy went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door, closed it, and came back. She said, “They’re all gone. There were nearly a dozen.” She lifted Dean off the table and set him on the floor. Timmy said, “I didn’t do it, Mommy.”
Mommy turned to Debbie, who said, “Not me.” Daddy said, “We’re to assume that Deany laid the mines?”
Timmy nodded.
Daddy said, “Who opened the refrigerator door for him, Timothy?”
Timmy was frank, as always. “I did.”
Mommy said, “Who brought him downstairs?”
Debbie said, “He got out. He went down. I saw.”
Mommy got down on her hands and knees and crawled around the living room, picking up the eggs. She got every one except the one in the toy box, which Debbie handed her.
After everyone was cleaned up, and Mommy pulled a chair up to the stove and helped Timmy make the scrambled eggs, and Daddy set Dean in his high chair “to keep him out of range,” then helped Debbie set the dining-room table, they had breakfast: eggs, ham, toast, and pink sugar bunnies. When Daddy finished his eggs, he lit his cigarette and said, “Do you sportsmen and women know the story of Uncle Frank and the Canada goose?”
Debbie shook her head. Timmy shook his head. Dean whapped his spoon on his tray.
Daddy said, “Well, you know, Uncle Frank was a great hunter as a boy, and he used to go out into the fields with his long long shotgun, looking for rabbits and beaver and bears and even geese, and one day in the fall, he is lying in the grass, and he hears honking, so he looks up, and here comes a flock of Canada geese, black and white, looking for water, and Uncle Frank thinks that they are going to settle in the creek, which is a half a mile across. And he thinks that when they do that he is going to shoot one, and take it home for supper.”
Debbie looked at Mommy, who was smiling.
Daddy said, “So—the geese begin to come in for a landing, and Uncle Frank raises his shotgun and takes aim at the biggest one, and just as he’s about to pull the trigger, something falls out of the sky and bops him on the head, and he falls over, half knocked out.” Daddy’s head flopped to the side and his eyes rolled; then he sat up. “When he wakes up a few minutes later, there is a golden egg lying next to him. He picks it up. The geese are all honking like mad and running toward him with their wings up, hissing, and you know geese are pretty scary, but Uncle Frank was the bravest boy ever, and so he just sits there, clutching the golden egg, and a very big goose comes up to him and says, ‘That’s my egg.’ Like this.” And Daddy leaned toward Debbie and loudly hissed, “Dassssss my eggggssssss.” Debbie sat back in her chair.
“And she reaches out and opens her beak around the egg and starts pulling. Uncle Frank pulls, too, but then he says, ‘What will you give me for it?’ because Uncle Frank knows how to make a deal. And he leans over and hides the egg. What do you think the geese offered?”
Timmy said, “A dollar?”
“The geese didn’t have any money.”
Mommy said, “Maybe they offered a couple of ducklings.”
Daddy said, “Just to rid the world of those pesky ducklings, right? But Uncle Frank had no use for ducklings.”
Debbie’s gaze was wandering around the room, and she happened to see the famous golden feather, which Mommy kept in a glass cabinet with some nice dishes. She said, “A golden feather.”
Daddy said, “Did they have a golden feather?”
Debbie said, “They had one. It was old and they took very good care of it.” Debbie saw Mommy glance at the golden feather. “They thought that something bad would happen if they lost it.”
“So why would they trade it?” asked Mommy.
“Because there was a golden baby in the egg,” said Debbie. “They had to.”
“Yes!” said Daddy. “That’s exactly right. All of the geese got together and they brought out the golden feather from the little purse they kept it in, and the biggest goose carried it over to Uncle Frank, and they traded. And then a score of years went by, and something happened to that feather.”
“What?” said Timmy.
“One day, Uncle Frank was walking down the street in Chicago with that feather in his hand, and Aunt Andy, the love of his life, came walking by, and he gave her the feather, and they lived happily ever after.”
“They did,” said Mommy.
Later on, at church, right when the minister started talking about yet another thing that Debbie could not understand, Debbie turned her head toward the window and thought about the golden feather, and she knew that someday the golden feather would belong to her.
ROSANNA SIMPLY DID NOT say a word—not one word—about the fact that Minnie was living in the big house with Joe and Lois, and showed no sign whatever of moving out, or even thinking of moving out. It was easy enough to say that a thirty-three-year-old woman who wore her hair in a bun and never a brighter color than maroon was a dyed-in-the-wool old maid, and would certainly come in handy when this child was born who was coming in February, but Rosanna thought it was something out of her grandparents’ generation. In those days the countryside was full of old maids and widows and no one thought a thing of it, what with the Civil War and the cholera and the smallpox, but these days it looked strange and it was strange. However, not a word. Here she was, she had gotten everything she wanted and, as Walter said, “You’re still not satisfied.” They were finishing supper; Claire had already gone upstairs to do her homework.
“It’s not a question of being satisfied or not.” Rosanna stood up to clear the dishes.
“What, then?”
But she didn’t know what it was a question of. The expression that came int
o her mind was ‘Well, I made my bed, so I might as well lie in it,’ but she didn’t know what that meant, either. She said, “Did I have my fiftieth birthday yet?”
“Yes, you had that two and a half years ago.”
“Dear me,” said Rosanna.
Walter patted her hand when she reached for the potato dish.
“Anyway,” said Rosanna, “my mother has had to put up with much more than I have, and your mother, too, and they just tut-tut and keep going. Every so often, my mother tosses her hand and rolls her eyes, and that’s as close as she ever comes to getting fed up.”
“My mother’s got more of a temper,” said Walter.
“And more to put up with, or at least she used to. But she never strangled him with her bare hands or poked him with the bread knife.”
“Or not so it showed, anyway.”
“They never complain when things are going well.”
“No, they don’t,” said Walter.
“But that’s when I want to complain. When things are going badly, I’m afraid to complain.”
“I don’t think of you as a complainer,” said Walter. “I think of you as a suggester.”
“Then we’ve had a happy marriage?”
“Doesn’t your mother sleep in her own room with the door locked?”
Rosanna said, “She always says that once she’s waked up she’s up for the night, so she has to lock her door.”
“That’s what she says.”
“Well, six children is six children.” And then, “One of her cousins had ten in ten years.”
“You had better tell Lillian how it works,” said Walter.
“If she doesn’t stop after this one, I will,” said Rosanna.
“When’s it due?”
“Lois is February, so Lillian is January, and Andy is March.”
“I keep expecting Henry to pop in and say he’s found the girl.”
“In the library,” said Rosanna. “Sleeping on a shelf and waiting for the prince to kiss her, and Henry’s the only person to enter that section in a hundred years.”
“Sounds about right,” said Walter.
So it was a pleasant conversation. A bit later, Claire came down and asked if she could play the tune she was practicing on the recorder, and she did—Rosanna barely made out that she was getting at “Amazing Grace,” and then there was another one by Bach, and she and Walter clapped. The recital, Claire informed them, was in two weeks. Then Walter finished reading the rest of the Saturday Evening Post that had Eisenhower on the cover, and Rosanna finished the row she was knitting in the sweater she was making for Lois’s baby—she had already finished the one for Lillian’s baby, and would do Andy’s next.
They went up the steep stairs. Joe had put a railing on either side, and they both held on. Walter seemed to haul himself from step to step. Yes, she knew she was fifty-two and a half, and that made him fifty-seven and a half. Up was easier than down—some days her right knee hurt so that she had to bob down the steps, holding the railing and sort of lurching right and left. No running up and down looking for this little thing and that anymore.
In the bedroom, Rosanna sat on the seat of her dressing table and took the pins out of her hair, then brushed it and braided it loosely for the night. Walter sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing his feet and separating his toes. Then he put his hand behind his neck and held it there while he opened his mouth and twisted his head, right, left, up, down. Then he blew his nose. Well, maybe there was a reason her mother locked her door, and it had only to do with the sad noises that old married people made. At least they had their, or most of their, teeth. Rosanna’s grandmother (not Oma, but Grandma Charlotta Kleinfelder) had an itinerant dentist take out all her teeth, because they were too much trouble, and she ate soups for the rest of her life.
“Oh my,” said Rosanna. She turned out her little light and stood up. Funny to think that for years she had gotten ready for bed by kerosene. Those lamps they had used were lined up in the barn, as if they might use them again. “Someday,” she went on, “this house will have an upstairs bathroom.”
“We can move our things down to the boys’ old room.”
“Chilly in there,” said Rosanna.
“Chilly in here,” said Walter.
They did what they did every night, which was roll toward the lowest part of the mattress, the center, and arrange themselves as comfortably as they could. Every night, Rosanna swore she was going to buy a new mattress, and every day, she forgot about it. She pulled up the sheet, and then the comforter she had made. Walter had on a nightshirt, and she could feel his hairy calves and bony feet move over and clamp her inside her flannel nightgown. It wasn’t yet time for bedsocks, but soon it would be. She pulled the sleeves of her nightgown down over her hands and pushed her head into the feather pillow. It was cold. Walter began to snore, and she shifted him onto his side.
When he came under her nightgown, it was in the usual way—more as if he was looking for warmth than looking for satisfaction—but as she rose to wakefulness, she realized that he was trying to kiss her, an unusual thing, and that his member was stiff, pressing against her side and then her thigh. The room was so dark that the moon must have set. She said, “Walter! Walter! Are you awake? You’re lying on my arm.”
He continued to lift her nightgown, and then he kissed her smack on the lips, a pushy but cushiony kiss, and, well, she reciprocated, which just made him worse. Moments later, he had her nightgown unbuttoned and over her head, and she had to disentangle her own arms. But she wasn’t so cold anymore, and neither was he. She pressed her breasts and stomach against his hairy chest and shoulders, and it was comforting, as it always had been. His hand came around and opened at the small of her back. He kept kissing her. He might or might not be awake. Sometimes he insisted that he was much more passionate in his sleep than awake, though why he would tell this story, Rosanna didn’t know. She lifted her leg up over his hip, and he found her and pressed into her. Now he was kissing the base of her neck, where it met the shoulder. Rosanna tingled. The hollow in the mattress seemed to deepen enough for them to break through and hit the floor, but it didn’t, though the bedstead creaked and complained.
It went on for a minute or two. At the end, Walter was coughing with the exertion, and finally had to sit up and take a sip of water. Rosanna put on her nightgown again and smoothed it over her hips and legs. She handed Walter his nightshirt, which had draped itself over the headboard. She straightened the pillows and the quilt. Walter had stopped coughing and blew out a large breath. “Oh me,” she said.
When they’d rearranged themselves in the center of the bed, and Walter had fallen asleep, Rosanna yawned a couple of times and then, secretly, just for herself, touched her husband’s forehead, gently, affectionately, amused at that expression about making her bed and lying in it. Yes, indeed. It was a strange thing, eight or nine hours day after day, every day they were alive. So many things that took place during the day drew them apart, and then there were these nights in this room, this very bed, warm and almost wordless, that had kept them together.
ELOISE AND ROSA SHOWED UP in Iowa City the morning Henry had a big exam in his Eighteenth Century Novel class, and he was so busy finishing Clarissa (fifteen hundred pages) that he hadn’t thought much about either cleaning up his room or where he could take Eloise and Rosa for lunch before they drove him back to the farm for Christmas break. Clarissa, of course, had not been assigned, nor had The History of Sir Charles Grandison—only Pamela—but Henry enjoyed rounding out his exam essay on Pamela by referring with casual savoir faire to the other two novels, and he made sure to refer to a passage at the end of Clarissa, just so Professor Macquart would know that he had read the whole thing. He had also, of course, read many other unassigned works of the eighteenth century, including Justine and Juliette. And all the boys read Fanny Hill, even if they had no idea what they were reading. He rather liked eighteenth-century literature, though it was awfully easy to read, and more sui
ted to enjoyment than to scholarship. His preferred text was the type that was missing a lot of lines, one where you had to infer what the faceless author might have been getting at rather than having it all sitting there before you. And he liked poetry more than prose.
Rosa was at college, too. Maybe she was at Berkeley. Wherever it was, it was someplace enviable, but at least it wasn’t Harvard. He hadn’t seen Rosa in four years or more, not since they came that Thanksgiving—Andy’s first Thanksgiving, when the house was jammed with people and he had to sleep on the sofa so Frank and Andy could have his room. And so it was surprising to see her coming toward him down North Clinton and then cutting across the lawn in front of Schaeffer Hall (where he had just taken his exam). That would be Eloise beside her, talking, of course, just like Mama, but taller than Mama, and better dressed—Eloise waved when she saw him. Rosa was slender, in slacks and boots and a jacket like a navy peacoat. She was dark; her black hair fell in a thick wave down her back, as if she didn’t care a thing about it. She had a long, thin face and a large, mobile mouth, and was eye level with him, and he was considered to be tall (though not as tall as Frank—that wasn’t allowed in their family). Eloise put her arms around him and said, “Darling Henry! You are so grown up now!”
“I am.” He let her hug him tight.
He couldn’t take his eyes off Rosa. She stood very upright, and held out her hand. He said, “I remember you.”
“Oh dear. That’s such a bad beginning. I was impossible when I was fifteen.”
“I guess I was so impossible myself that I didn’t notice.”
“You only ate pie,” said Eloise.
“I’m sure I had my nose in a book.”
“That, too,” said Rosa. “But I pretended not to care.”
Henry put his arm around her shoulders and said, “It’s nice to see you now.”
Eloise said, “Where shall we eat? Are you finished with your exams?”
Still, he could not take his eyes off Rosa.