Golden Age (53 page)

Everyone looked excited and cheerful, and she and Jason were in the Union by one, eating pulled-pork sandwiches for lunch. She didn’t think much about it (though she did conscientiously make up her missed classes) until a month later, when she saw the pepper-spray incident at UC Davis. She had in fact applied to the microbiology department at UC Davis, and gotten in, but she hadn’t gotten a fellowship, and the tuition was much higher than at ISU, so she had stayed in Ames. She watched the footage several times, how casually the cop pointed the pepper spray at the kid sitting at his feet, and sprayed him in the face. That might have been her, except—not; would never have happened at ISU. Felicity was a realist above all. She did look up the cop’s salary—$110,000. That surprised her. Her best teacher, the Foodborne Hazards professor, wasn’t making two-thirds of that; as for Jason, he didn’t have a chance, really.

2012

I
T WAS
the pepper-spray incident that propelled Richie, at long last, into his new job at a think tank—the ReNewVa think tank. Riley found him the spot, but he wouldn’t have ended up there without Jerry Nadler, who was conducting an inquiry into law-enforcement malfeasance throughout the Occupy movement, and Michael, who knew Boris Kohn, the ReNewVa funder, from some Caribbean trip and talked Richie up for the job. Officially, he was a “consultant,” and he did have an office, but his real job was to be told what to do and say. He still had that TV presence he’d always had, that way of seeming enthusiastic and genuine. As Jerry pursued his inquiry, Richie rephrased what he said and smiled more than Jerry did. Riley insisted that Michael never appear at ReNewVa. Richie didn’t have to enforce this—Michael knew where he was welcome and where he wasn’t. He spent his time at youth-empowerment programs around D.C., shooting hoops with kids and giving little talks on Focus and Intention.

Michael had opened up to Richie in the last six months. He blamed Loretta for almost everything. Did Richie remember that girl, the artist, Lynne? He’d adored her, bought her that place in SoHo, but she scared him, she was so ambitious and, he thought at the time, knowledgeable. He was wrong. Loretta was the one who should have scared him; she had seemed to agree with him, but she took his every
thought or statement a step further. Chance was born, and he said, “This is fun, we should have a flock”—she stopped using birth control, and here came Tia. He said he rather liked Reagan or Thatcher, or whoever, and there they were, contributing as much as possible to Reagan’s campaign, offering to go to rallies. He decided to cut back on his drinking, and she had him not only in AA but with a counselor three days a week. He had to agree to whatever she “suggested” just to gain a little bit of freedom. The only thing she left to him was making the money, and so he spent more and more time at work, just to have something for himself. And he wasn’t allowed to spend it—she chose the place on the Upper East Side, she chose the schools…

When Richie and Jessica went to Michael’s place for dinner (and to meet Binky’s boyfriend) after the New Hampshire debate, Michael said, idly, “At least Huntsman isn’t an idiot.”

Richie kept cutting his steak into smaller and smaller pieces. Jessica said, “That depends on your definition of an idiot.”

Binky laughed and the boyfriend looked carefully around the table. According to Michael, the boy’s family was deeply divided, politically, and dishware had been thrown at Thanksgiving. He was from State College, Pennsylvania, and sold houses on the Internet to investors in China.

Michael said, “What is your definition of an idiot, Jessica?”

“A voice crying out in the wilderness.”

Richie laughed and patted her knee under the table, but said nothing.

Michael said, “Well, Romney is an idiot—I know from firsthand experience. You tell him something, anything, and he gives you a sort of blank smile and then looks over your shoulder, I guess for the cue cards. I never met anyone else like him. I always thought he had a condition of some sort.”

Richie said, “They can’t stop him.”

“The voters will,” said Michael, decisively, and the boyfriend—oh, yeah, Linc—breathed a sigh of relief.

Michael didn’t dislike Obama, never called him by any remotely racist epithet. Michael thought Obama was reasonable in all things, and said that he felt relief just being able to express that opinion out loud. He liked Geithner, he liked Holder, he liked Sonia Sotomayor. Most of the others he hadn’t met. It could be said that the only person
in the world who made him angry these days was Loretta, who, on the advice of the monsignor (now in North Dakota, where his ministry was profoundly needed), had resolved to be patient. She had even called Richie late one night to probe into whether there was any hope of a reconciliation. Richie, sitting up in bed, with Jessica’s hand in his, had told her the truth—no. Loretta had said, “He
will
regret that.”

Richie had said, “I don’t think so, not in this lifetime.”

Loretta had said, “The next one is a lot longer,” and slammed down the phone. Then Richie had rolled up against Jessica, kissed her about twenty times, and said, “What do you think happens after we die?” And Jessica said, “Nothing.” That thought seemed like a tremendous relief.

As far as Richie knew, Michael was not dating anyone. He never mentioned women, and he told Richie to drop by whenever he was in the neighborhood. Richie did, twice. Not a woman in the place, not a stray item of underwear, no fragrant handkerchief under the sofa. Maybe this was the hardest thing to believe, so Richie did not believe it, but he respected Michael’s secrecy skills.

—

UNLIKE THE HOUSE
to the left, their building did still have its roof and shingles, and unlike the building across the street, their front entrance was not blocked by a huge tree that had flipped out of the ground onto two cars, a blue Toyota and a silver Mercedes. Facing east turned out to be a good thing—the only damage was to rooms overlooking the alley, like their bedroom, not to rooms overlooking the street, like their living room. Some junk had blown onto their deck, and the lounge chairs and table were turned over, but, as Michael said when he showed up about five minutes after Richie and Jessica came up from the cellar, where they had spent the night, it could be worse. He had already driven out to Uncle Henry’s—trees down, but no real damage; Henry, Riley, and Alexis sent their best. Since he had shoes on, Michael braved the glass-strewn bedroom and brought out some clothes. Power was out everywhere, but his house had a generator—did they know that?—so he would give them breakfast.

The Shoebox was in good shape—the virtue of small windows. Even the tiny little sunporch was okay, since it looked away from the storm. Michael scrambled eggs, made toast and coffee, told Richie
and Jessica he had worried about them, been up all night, in fact, though he didn’t mind that.

Jessica went to the bathroom to take a shower. Michael talked about the “derecho”—started as a storm cell in Iowa, grew and expanded, eighty-to-ninety-mile-per-hour winds, straight, not swirling, always blew from the northwest. Lots of storms that people thought were tornadoes were really derechos. While he was taking his own shower, Richie managed to come to, and not only from this hard night. He hadn’t meant to be so dumbstruck, he hadn’t meant to feel so old and sunk in some sort of mental goop, he hadn’t meant to be taken care of by Michael, he hadn’t meant to let almost four years elapse after his time in the Congress before he got himself together. He hadn’t meant to take Jessica for granted, to buy her only a potted hydrangea from the grocery store for their last anniversary. It was a sign of how lost he was that he did love her all the time, turned toward her like a sunflower toward the sun, and yet he let conversations die, occasions where they might do something together pass, opportunities to help her make dinner or do the dishes fall by the wayside. Did she think he was indifferent to her, when, really, he was indifferent to himself? When he got out of the shower, toweled off, and opened the bathroom door, he heard her laugh in the kitchen. She hadn’t given him one of those laughs in weeks. Michael laughed, too, exactly in sync. Richie shook his head back and forth, back and forth, loosening the dead particles of brain matter that seemed to be clogging his thoughts. They had done their best to grab his hands and drag him out of the sinkhole. Now it was time for him to exert himself.

Once they put on their clothes, Richie suggested to Jessica that they drive out to Uncle Henry’s, partly to see what they could see on the way. And also, of course, to enjoy the car’s air conditioning. What they saw was interesting. Their neighborhood was more damaged than most of the neighborhoods in the city, but the suburbs were a mess—lots of detours because of trees and power lines. When they finally got to Henry’s, Henry and Riley were out in the yard, raking up debris. Richie pulled in. Were they glad to see him? They seemed glad to see Jessica. Richie started his new life by pitching in, sweeping, raking, picking up debris, dragging the waste containers to the curb, wiping the sweat off his brow with the hem of his shirt, but not therefore tapering off. In spite of the heat, they laughed a lot. Riley
kept pausing, looking at Alexis, and smiling. Richie overheard her say to Jessica, “Eight to twelve is the best age! The last time I was really, really happy was when I was in fifth grade.” And Jessica laughed and nodded. I’m happy now, thought Richie. I am happy now.

Only two interns and one consultant at ReNewVa were working on climate change, according to Riley. No funds for more. “I could help them,” said Richie at supper. “I’m not doing anything else.”

Riley said, “Talk to Ezra. He’s good.”

“He’s twenty-three,” said Richie. “He weighs six pounds.”

“More like a hundred, but he is a vegan. Nevertheless, he’s up-to-date. He graduated from Caltech. He has no interpersonal skills. He knows nothing about the Arab Spring, but he can put you to work. Just don’t take offense at his air of superiority.”

The ReNewVa offices did have power on Monday. He knocked on Ezra’s door and said, “So—Ezra! Get me up to speed about climate change.”

Ezra looked up from his Diet Coke and burped, then said, “No one ever says that to me.”

Richie said, “Good. Then I have you to myself.”

“Do you want to work on the Keystone XL pipeline or weather extremes?”

“Anything is fine,” said Richie.

Ezra’s last name was Newmark, and he was from Roxbury, New York. There was a picture of John Burroughs above his desk. Richie knew this because the words
JOHN BURROUGHS
were printed on a piece of paper to the left, shaped like an arrow and pointing at the bearded elderly man. Underneath the picture was another piece of paper, cut into a jagged shape, with the words “Marcellus Shale” printed on it. To the right were four pictures of flooding in Roxbury caused by Hurricane Irene, now almost a year in the past. Richie didn’t ask if the pictures were of Ezra’s parents’ house, but he looked at them thoughtfully. He remembered Irene as something of a bust, but, then, a year ago, he hadn’t been thinking of the Catskills, or much of anything else. Ezra spoke quickly but with exceptional clarity, as if he had been explaining things to people his whole life. He suggested that Richie write down what he was being told. Richie took his suggestion.

That was his life at work. At home, he avoided looking at the sofa, at the television, at his computer, all lures to sitting down and fading
out, including the London Olympics—yes, you could watch javelin and discus and sprints until you fell into a coma. He suggested what might be good for supper, stopped at the market on the way home, bought things like eggplant and leeks. He moved on, in the Julia Child cookbook, from Potage Parmentier to Potage Crème de Cresson, and then he jumped ahead to Carbonnades à la Flamande. Jessica loved it. He bought another cookbook at the supermarket, called
All-Time Best Recipes
. A drain got clogged. He found a wire hanger and unclogged it. The summer, though hot, began to progress with verve and energy.

All the same, he did not take personally the drought in Iowa until Michael brought it up in late August. There was a graphic on the
New York Times
Web site about crops—corn, soybeans, wheat, sorghum. Tiny black dots like a swarm of locusts hovered over the map of Iowa (and Minnesota, and Missouri, and Nebraska), indicating crops that had been declared “poor or worse” and would be left in the ground or turned into silage. Fifty percent of corn, a sixth of the soybean crop. There was also a report that he found somewhere, about river temperatures being almost a hundred, and thousands of fish dying in the water and decaying along the banks. Somehow Michael knew some things that Ezra had mentioned, things that Richie considered rather esoteric—the flow of water down the Mississippi was so lacking that salt water from the Gulf was flowing upriver toward New Orleans; huge soybean plantations were the root cause of the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. None of these factoids surprised Richie: Ezra had a four-by-six map of the United States with drought conditions penciled in on the wall of his office, across from John Burroughs. What surprised him was that Michael seemed interested, that he knew conditions were worse than they had been in the eighties (“Not the year we were there, but the year after that—’88 was a terrible drought year”), as bad as they had been in the fifties. He was Facebook friends with Felicity. (Did Richie remember her? What was she, early twenties—Jesse’s youngest.) She posted about crop reports, even took a picture or two of Jesse’s corn (dry, pale) and beans (spare, but not a disaster). She took pictures of the soil between the rows—dusty—and the dust on the west side of the house. Her comments were usually “Could be worse” and “At least a little rain.”