Some Luck (54 page)

“Oh, yes. But I just put her between me and the wall, on the other side from Frank, and nursed her off and on most of the night. Keeps her quiet, anyway.” Lillian did not approve of this, either, but she was not the sort of person to say anything. Andy said, “How about you?”

“Twice. Two a.m. and six. Arthur took the two a.m.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice, careful to avoid the cigarette and the smoke. “I hope, for your sake, that Frank is just like Arthur. He’s not, you know, a father, more like another mother. I trust him completely, and the kids adore him.”

Andy stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray beside the sink and, also in a low voice, said, “So what are he and Frank talking about all the time? Whisper, whisper, whisper.”

And, without thinking, Lillian said, “Oh, that must be Judy. They always talk about Judy in low voices, but I don’t see why.”

“Who’s Judy?”

It was then that Lillian realized she should have kept her trap shut. Stalling, she laughed once and said, “Oh, he hasn’t told you about Judy?”

Andy visibly bristled. Her eyebrows lifted, and she put her other arm around Janet and laid the baby’s head against her neck. There was a sudden gust of wind against the side of the house that startled Lillian, but it didn’t distract Andy. She said, “Tell me. I knew he had girlfriends, but he’s never said a word about any of them.”

Lillian bit her lip and wished that Dean would cry or something. Even Timmy and Debbie were inconveniently quiet. She made herself say, “Well, honey, Judy was not a girlfriend, in the sense you mean. You know who she is.”

“I do? I don’t know a single Judy.”

Lillian leaned over and whispered the name in Andy’s ear, and Andy said, “No! He dated her? She’s the one who was convicted for spying for the Russians, and now they let her off again.”

Lillian would have said later that she thought long and hard about her next remark, but she really paused for only a second or two. She said, “Arthur put him up to it. They—we—were suspicious of her, and Arthur got Frank to check her out, and Frank decided that the suspicions were valid. And then they got her. Hoover hates her with a black passion. But in the end, that’s why she got off, because he tracked her every move without a warrant.”

“Hoover who?”

“J. Edgar.”

“Oh, good Lord!”

“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

H
ENRY 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 Fu
β
, 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 waist?”

“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.