Golden Age (39 page)

Finally, the girls got Delie into her dress. Her mom handed her her bouquet; the wedding planner set her veil on her head and floated the netting over her face. Delie did look happy. It seemed as though she saw Chance as a real catch.

The wedding planner opened the door to the corridor. When they lined up, Emily found herself beside one of Delie’s Texas cousins, who was fat and did not look like a cowboy. Tia was a maid of honor, and Binky was fourth in line, craning her neck to see everything while talking and talking, the way she always did.

Most of the family had flown in on a jet her uncle Michael had rented. They were sprinkled here and there like clover blossoms in a green field. You could recognize them even if you didn’t know them, because they didn’t have the hair—the men weren’t wearing pompadours and the women weren’t puffed up. Even Aunt Loretta was neatly trimmed. Mrs. Perroni was wearing a dress from the eighties—encrusted with beads—and Grandma Andy was wearing a dress from the Kennedy era. Emily had plenty of time to notice all of this as she walked down the aisle they had made in the ballroom (the Rankins were not Catholic, so there could not be a Catholic wedding). Emily and her partner reached the satin-draped platform and parted. When she took her place, Emily realized that the bridesmaids were arranged in order of height. All of this was
interesting;
Tina told her
over and over that she would be much happier if she observed rather than judged, but they both knew how hard old habits were to break. And so, during the reception, she observed her uncle Michael and Chance. They did a lot of the same things: they danced with Delie, they danced with Aunt Loretta, they danced with Mrs. Rankin. They looked rather alike—more alike now, Emily thought, than Michael and Richie. She leaned over to Tia and said, “Don’t you think your dad and Chance dance alike?”

Tia tossed her head, watched, then said, “Chancie dances like he’s doing it with you. Dad dances like he’s doing it
to
you.”

Emily laughed out loud.

But, still, your eye was drawn to the older man, not the younger, wasn’t it? She could see around the room: Her mom was looking at Uncle Michael. Two of Delie’s aunts were looking at him, too. One of the bartenders was watching him. Emily shivered, just slightly, but she didn’t know why. At the next table, she saw Tina scribbling on a napkin—a cloth napkin. She made up her mind that that objet d’art would not be left behind. The music stopped, then started again. Her uncle Michael went over and asked Grandma Andy to dance. Everyone fell silent, even the singer, but the music swelled, and her grandmother—what was she, eighty-five?—curved the line of her body, stepped out, and let her son spin her across the floor.

—

FELICITY WAS SITTING
on her old purple rug. The sleeping porch looked out over the fields to the north. It was a sunny Sunday morning. Her dad and mom had gone to services, but she had said she had a sore throat so she wouldn’t have to go. Some Sundays, she just could not take Pastor Diehl. His lips were too big or something. He looked like a cartoon to her, though her mom thought he was nice enough. There was also that thing about how he got out on the basketball court with the kids. His feet were really big. He looked disgusting. Her room had a door to the sleeping porch, and so did Perky’s, and she was listening to Perky and Guthrie talk about something. They thought their conversation was private. They didn’t realize that Felicity had opened their door just enough to hear.

Guthrie was on leave. His first deployment had ended, and now he was waiting for the second one. According to her dad, Great-Uncle
Frank had been in Europe for a whole war, but that wasn’t the way it was anymore. Perky said, “That was the biggest battle.”

Guthrie said, “You know what it was like? It was like attacking St. Louis. It’s right on the river. It’s about the same size, and St. Louis has a lot of churches. Well, Fallujah has a lot of mosques. And they were all full of weapons. Not much happened there during the invasion itself, so the insurgents had plenty of time to get ready.”

Felicity’s mom had told her that Guthrie would be different when he got home. No really bad things had happened to him, like getting shot or driving over a bomb (an “improvised explosive device”—Felicity mouthed the words), but every war was full of things that you didn’t want to see unless you had to, and Guthrie had seen plenty of them. He came home more serious, more jumpy. But he did want to go back.

“I mean, we kicked them out once, but that didn’t work. There was this old Baathist resort nearby. Kind of like that casino outside of St. Louis, in St. Charles. So they weren’t going to let it go easy.”

“What was the scariest thing?”

Felicity saw that she was fiddling with her hair, winding it around her finger over and over. She unwound it, put her hand in her lap. Guthrie didn’t say anything for a moment. The dark-red oak floorboards of the porch were cool and smooth, and one of the windows rattled in the breeze. She imagined either Guthrie or Perky noticing the crack in the doorway and discovering her, but just then Guthrie said: “I don’t know. It’s scariest before you go in. It’s scary to imagine the IEDs and the booby traps and the insurgents around every corner. Then you do go in, and something happens, and you’re so jacked up you don’t take it in at the time. You just keep going. I mean, this guy in my unit who was behind me got hit by a rocket. Just blew him up. We saw it, but no one said anything. There was nothing to say.”

Felicity rested her palm on her forehead. She was suddenly feeling a little dizzy. She knew that there were women soldiers in Iraq, who wore camo and everything.

Guthrie said, “It’s fucking hot. You’re covered from top to toe and wearing boots and carrying, carrying like a hundred pounds of shit. If you’re in a tank, it’s boiling. A guy passes out, you just shake him and hydrate him, and he’s got to get it together.” Then he said, “I mean, there were almost twenty thousand troops. That seems like a
lot, and it was way more than when they went in there the first time, a year ago, and fucking lost. But they learned their lesson. Forty thousand would have been better, in a way. Or bombing the place flat with NE—you know, novel explosives. Those are scary. The marines did some of that. That’s what the IDF would do.”

Felicity knew that the IDF was the Israelis. They had talked about it in school.

“What about the white phosphorus?”

“Who said anything about that?”

“I read about it.”

“I’m not saying you can’t use it. You got to use what you got to use.”

Now there was a long pause, so long that Felicity had to extend her legs, very slowly, and she made a noise, because the rug shifted. Outside, in the top of the apple tree, two squirrels started running along a big branch, as if they were playing tag. Finally, Guthrie said, “Well, we saw some stuff. I’m not saying that our guys aimed it
at
anyone. Stuff goes up, stuff comes down. You flush them out and then shoot them. Maybe that’s putting them out of their misery.”

Perky said, “Yeah.” Dully, agreeing.

Then Guthrie said, “The skin just gets burned off where the crap lands, then it keeps burning into the flesh as long as there is any of it. I mean, you fucking took chemistry.”

Felicity stared at her pale, cold knees and shins, imagining this.

Suddenly the door opened, and Guthrie stepped onto the porch. She thought he was going to yell at her, but he didn’t even notice her. He went over to one of the windows, opened it, lit a cigarette. Felicity pulled her knees up again and sat quietly. He was wearing briefs and a T-shirt, even though it was cold. She hadn’t seen him in briefs for a long time—in their house, everyone was very modest. His legs were hairy, all the way down to his ankles. His tattoo was a little covered up, but she knew he would shave his head again when he was ready to be sent back. He was all muscle; that was another way he had changed. He stared out the window long enough to smoke the whole cigarette, then stab the butt into an ashtray that she hadn’t seen on the windowsill. He turned around and saw her. “Hey, kiddo. What are you doing?”

She was brave. She said, “Eavesdropping.”

He smiled his usual old smile and said, “Well, I guess someone has to.” He came over and held out his hand to her. She took his and stood up. He said, “I hear you learned how to make popovers.”

“Grandma taught me.”

“Well, let’s have some.”

She said, “Have you killed anyone?”

He said, “No one I know.”

“Do you care if I ask?”

“No. Because I think about it.”

She got a little closer to him, and put her hand in his. He squeezed it. When they made the popovers, he separated the eggs.

—

IT TURNED OUT
that Jessica Montana was really Jessica MacKenna, or would have been if her ancestors had not moved from County Cork to Butte, Montana, in the early twentieth century. This was what Henry found interesting about her. Otherwise, she seemed like a good match for Richie. Riley, however, found the name change highly suspicious. Jessica was sitting at the table, with her back to the kitchen door, saying to Henry that she herself had never been back to Inishannon, or anywhere in Ireland, though her sister, Aileen Montana, had rented a car and driven from Dublin to Galway to Limerick to Cork to Waterford and back to Dublin. Henry was saying, “I would love to do that,” but even so he heard Riley snort. Richie turned his head in Riley’s direction, but Jessica paid her no mind. Jessica seemed like the type who went blithely forward, eternally surprised but not daunted by impediments. There were Calhouns from Ireland, and plenty of Rileys, but when Henry prodded her, Riley said that her Riley grandmother was English and her Calhouns were Scottish. She said nothing about her Menominee side.

Henry knew he tended to go on at boring length about all sorts of origins, and it had taken Richie months to agree to this little supper, so he made himself shut up. Alexis, who was almost three, about as big as a minute, and had Riley’s dark, penetrating eyes, said, “Do you like tofu?” in a serious voice, and looked at Jessica. Riley had been trying to get Alexis to eat tofu for a couple of weeks now, with no success. Alexis was a good talker and a good passive resister. One of
her ploys was to solicit opinions on those things that her mother was trying to foist upon her.

Jessica said, “Not really. Grilled, maybe.” She answered as if she were talking to an adult.

Riley came in, set the eggplant Parmesan on the table, and said, “So—you’re a meat eater? How many times a week?”

“Every day, I suppose,” said Jessica. “I don’t really think about it. I have a big appetite.”

She looked as though she did, thought Henry.

“We’ve been vegetarian for a long time. Alexis has never had meat.”

Except for those bits of hot dog Henry had given her.

“But she doesn’t like tofu, I’m sorry to say.”

“Yuck,” said Alexis, but with an alluring smile on her face.

“My grandfather was a butcher,” said Jessica. “You can’t imagine the offal that my father and his brothers ate. Kidneys were just the beginning.” She helped herself to the eggplant, ate with pleasure. It took Riley about a minute to say, “What’s the difference, really?”

Jessica let this go by.

After Richie and Jessica left and Alexis was put to bed, Henry helped with the dishes.

Riley said, “This can’t last. She is the most oblivious woman I’ve ever met.”

“Maybe she’s just easygoing. I mean, what is she, forty? Never been married.”

“Yes, she just does what she wants. Boxing. Bacon. She drives a diesel pickup. She voted for Dubya once, then Kerrey once. I’m not saying she’s unprincipled, but—”

“Yes, dear, that’s precisely what you are saying.”

“She likes Michael.”

“I like Michael.”

“You have to like him! He’s your nephew. I mean, she likes him voluntarily.”

That seemed to be the crux of it. Henry wiped the last plate carefully and placed it in the cabinet. He said, “I know you have reasons to disapprove of Michael, but he’s got a sense of humor. He’s observant. He’s well read. He does his thing, and he lets others do their thing.”

“Fucking free market,” said Riley. “I would love to have a look at his portfolio. I’m sure every investment is in something that gets government subsidies, all the time that he is saying the free market must decide what works and doesn’t.”

“Hypocrisy is not confined to the financial sector.”

“I don’t understand how he thinks,” said Riley. “I just don’t.” Henry let it go at that.

Henry felt he did understand how Michael thought—he thought like a hunter, he thought like an invader, he thought like a predator. He sought high status, which in the modern world was measured by money, houses, cars, looks, rumored but unproven mistresses, and demeanor. A thousand years ago, he would have been wearing only the best furs, only the most brilliant neck chains; he would have spent his free time hunting wolves and bears. Two thousand years ago, he would have had slaves and concubines; five thousand years ago, he would have had multiple wives, many horses, and a nice circular dome for a house, with a neat fire in the middle of the stone flooring. What was to understand? The incomprehensible thing was that in the modern world his type seemed confined to certain regions—New York, Washington, L.A., London—but in retreat elsewhere—Berlin, Paris, Madrid, maybe Beijing. That he held no appeal for Riley was no surprise, either—all of her eggs were in the high-priestess basket. She adhered to a calling that molded her thinking, she had suffered a sacrifice, she had a three-year-old postulant, she hated profligacy of any kind. And she was in a battle for the soul of Richie. It was clear to Henry that Richie’s soul was indeed embattled, and thus he clung to Riley as an antidote to Michael. But what would she gain were she to win him? Better, in Henry’s view, to admit, not defeat, but that the prize was not what it appeared to be. Richie would never not fold, never not compromise. Henry had discovered Blockbuster, where he loved to wander as he had once wandered library stacks; recently, he’d come across a
Hamlet
he had missed, with Bill Murray as Polonius, set in New York City. He’d watched it in fascination and discovered that he did not want Hamlet to come to the point and avenge his father, he wanted him to cross the boundary from feuding society to a society of laws and bring his uncle to trial. In his whole life, Henry had never disagreed with Shakespeare, but now, old man that he was, he did. Michael had his place, but it was as a historical marker.