Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  EVERYONE HAD SAID how much Lillian would like the high school. Mama and Granny Elizabeth had sewn her just the outfits she wanted, ones she’d seen in a magazine, and she had cut her hair (putting her braids, which were twenty-two inches long, away in a drawer). She wore a smoother hairdo now, still bright blond, but she had to roll it under every night and sleep on it. She could not say that the girls and the boys were mean to her—in general, they ignored her, didn’t look at her at all. An odd thing to know was that she was short, that when she walked down the hall she was merely part of the crowd, that her greatest efforts simply raised her to the level of most of the others. She, who had been told for her entire life that she was an angel and a beauty and a darling, wasn’t any of these things—she was one of many girls who were blonde, a little bigger in the hips than in the bust, a girl who had to watch out where she hemmed her skirts for fear that her calves would look unattractive.

  And she, whom adults loved, was not the adored of her teachers, either. They considered her a decent student, for a girl, but, according to the ones who remembered him, nothing like Frank. Frank had been a phenomenon—totally ignorant of some of the simplest things, like the fact that London was in England, but totally capable of learning. Once he saw a map of Europe, and England, and London, and read an assigned book, Oliver Twist, he could tell you exactly where Oliver started out, where he went, and where he ended up. Yes, he had a “photographic memory,” that was part of it, but he understood what things meant, too. That’s what the English teacher said, anyway. The chemistry teacher saw her name on the class list and told the class about the time her brother Frank blew a window out of the classroom with a nitrogen experiment of some sort.

  Jane was taller than she was now, by half a head, and thinner, too. She had been used to thinking of Jane as “malnourished,” as Mama would say, but now that she was in high school, she saw that Jane was rather elegant-looking—dark and flat-chested. All the girls preferred to be flat-chested with slim hips. They liked Bette Davis, of course, but also Barbara Stanwyck, blondes who were not really blonde, and who didn’t look at all like they did, farm girls, Iowa girls. Even Margaret Lindsay, who was born in Iowa and had started out as Margaret Kies—wouldn’t that be German?—didn’t look like any of the girls in the high school. “Jane Morris” was a good name for Hollywood, and their very first semester, she tried out for a part in the play. She didn’t seem to be daunted when she didn’t get it, either. When the other kids laughed in her audition, she didn’t notice, or didn’t care. Lillian cared on her behalf, but didn’t say anything. Jane did have a way of lifting her head and flaring her nostrils that said, “I’ll be leaving this town very soon,” which made Lillian laugh.

  At the high school, Lillian missed Henry. Henry was eight now, and such a chatterbox. Lillian was sure he was driving Minnie crazy. She wished that Minnie would go to the school board and report that she couldn’t possibly teach at the school without Lillian to help her, and then Lillian could go back there and be of some use, instead of wandering the halls of the high school, wondering why in the world she had to grow up.

  FRANK WAS HAVING lunch in Ragnar’s café with Lawrence, Hildy, and Eunice. Frank didn’t go to Ragnar’s café all that much, because Ragnar tended to watch him from across the room and ostentatiously leave him alone, but Lawrence liked the steak with popovers. Hildy was Frank’s girlfriend, a sophomore in his ancient-history class, from Decorah, far in the northeast corner of Iowa. She spoke Norwegian at home (it sounded like everyone in that town did), and she spoke Norwegian to Ragnar, who was charmed by it. But everyone was charmed by her—she was a beautiful girl—great ankles, terrific knees, slim waist, nice bust, broad shoulders, long neck, glamorous smile, eyes so blue that they seemed to spring out at you when she opened them. When Frank and Hildy walked down the street, heads did turn. Maybe she was better-looking than he was—and he considered that a good thing. She was crazy about Frank—they both knew it. He was playing it cool. Lawrence was here with Eunice. Eunice was from St. Louis, Missouri, of all places, and she never let you forget it. How she had gotten to a place like Iowa State, she couldn’t imagine. She was a Tri Delt, majoring in finding a diamond ring.

  The first time Lawrence put his hand to his jaw was after he took a bite of steak. A few minutes later, he said, “Hey, ouch!”

  It was Hildy, not Eunice, who said, “What’s the matter?”

  “My tooth. My tooth is stabbing me.”

  They ate a bit more; Frank had the fried chicken, which was exactly like Mama’s, but with fried potatoes, not mashed. Finally, Lawrence just dropped his fork on the table and said, “What is happening?”

  The Flying Cloud was parked outside, and the four of them piled into it, but Lawrence said he was in too much pain to drive, so Frank drove. In the back seat (he could see in the mirror), Lawrence was sitting up, and then he fell over with his head in Eunice’s lap. Frank also saw in the mirror that she looked down with no expression on her face at all, and then cautiously stroked his hair. They drove around Campustown, looking for a dentist.

  The dentist they found, somewhere up Hayward, was not working—he was cleaning his office, since it was Saturday, but one look at Lawrence in the back of the car, and he opened the door and stepped aside. They more or less dragged Lawrence in and set him in the chair. The dentist said that he had an impacted wisdom tooth, and that he needed to go to Mary Greeley. That was over on the other side of town, east on Lincoln Way and across the tracks. It was a bright, cold day, almost time for Christmas break. Over lunch, they had been talking about whether they liked to go home or not. Hildy had said that Christmas in Decorah was a real celebration, like Christmas in Norway—candles, that sort of thing. Frank drove the Flying Cloud through the crossing, and up Douglas. He turned in at the hospital driveway.

  Well, Lawrence was dead by Monday morning. Eunice told Hildy, and Hildy showed up at Frank’s room on Welch before breakfast, and told him. The two of them stared at each other, and Hildy started crying. Frank said, “Didn’t you ever have anyone in your family die?”

  “Not since before I was born.”

  “My sister died when I was five. She was jumping around during a rainstorm, and the thunder clapped. She fell down and slammed the back of her head on the corner of an egg crate.”

  Hildy said, “Oh, Frank!”

  “I always wondered if it was me fiddling my heels on the rug that made her lose her balance.”

  “You did? You did always wonder that?” Hildy sat down in his lap and wept with her head against his chest. “How can you die from a tooth?” she said. “How can God make that happen?” Frank said nothing, but tightened his arms around her. On a farm, you knew that you could die from anything, or you could survive anything. “Why?” was a question that his relatives never asked—they just told the stories, clucked, shook their heads. He said, “Okay, Hildy. We are going to walk up Hayward and find that dentist and ask him. We’re just going to do that.” Hildy was so distraught that he had to button her coat and tie her scarf. He made her walk down the stairs, out the door, to the left, over to Hayward, up the street. Forthright, warming steps. He put his arm around her waist, but he did push her forward, between the snowdrifts.

  The dentist came out as soon as he saw them, and they told him what had happened to Lawrence. Hildy said, “I can’t understand it. How—”

  “Massive infection. That kind of pain he had was a symptom of massive infection. I think I’ll call the fellow who operated.…”

  And so it went, all the discussions of every little thing. Not even Eunice knew the truth, Frank thought, the truth of how Lawrence had lain there in that room, the truth that had nothing to do with what the doctor did or the nature of the infection. The truth would have been in that face that Frank was so familiar with—the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the expressions that passed over that face as life gave way to death. Everyone had missed that, that was the betrayal. It was okay to live or die, Frank thought (there was Rolf, f
or whom it was okay to die), but it was not okay that no one was there to see the passing.

  Everything that others found comforting—fond memories of the dead, weeping, analyzing the last doomed decisions, praying, keeping silent, giving comfort, receiving comfort—Frank found pointless and enraging. The hearse drove the corpse away, Eunice went to Shenandoah for the funeral, someone was hired to take the car, Hildy wrote him every day from Decorah. Once he got back to the farm, Frank said nothing to Mama or Papa about the death, and when Eloise asked him how his friend Lawrence was, all he said was “Dead.” Which shocked her. But he walked away before she could ask any questions, and he went back to campus two days after Christmas, saying that he had to get back to work.

  1941

  IT WAS HENRY who asked for a cake for Claire’s second birthday. Rosanna, who didn’t feel especially well, had let the thought slip her mind. When Henry began looking into cupboards and climbing on chairs, she said, “What now?”

  “I’m looking for Claire’s cake.”

  “I didn’t make Claire a cake. She’s too young for a cake.”

  “She likes cake,” said Henry. “She knows it’s her birthday.”

  “Goodness me,” exclaimed Rosanna, thinking of all the beating of eggs and the sifting of flour, but then she felt that particular torment she always felt when she was caught overlooking Claire in some way. She said, “Well, you can help me. Lillian can play with her in the front room.”

  “Can we have chocolate?”

  “We have no chocolate. But angel food is much healthier, especially for a little girl.”

  Henry scowled for the barest second, until Rosanna said, “You can separate the eggs.” They had plenty of eggs, and separating twelve of them would keep Henry well occupied. They had cream for whipping as icing, too, and there was white sugar left over from Christmas baking—thank Heaven for that. “Go tell Lillian.” Henry ran through the door to the dining room, calling “Lil! Lil!” and Rosanna found the tube pan. The range was hot—hot enough to warm the kitchen, as always in January—so she had nothing to complain of.

  But Claire was Walter’s child, and it was true, as much as she tried to hide it, that her own services for Claire were tinted more with obligation than with adoration. What she told herself was not that she did not like Claire—Claire was a very good child. It was that adoration had not paid off—look at Frankie. And as soon as she looked at Frankie, she wondered what motherhood was for. Everyone said you could not ask for a better son than Frank—successful, personable, and so handsome. Even Walter was satisfied with him, at last. But Rosanna knew better. Frank didn’t care a fig about any of them, not even her, his adoring mother. But did every child have to be a loving child? When they were your brothers and sisters, you accepted without hesitation that they had reservations about your parents. In fact, in her own very private opinion, her brother Rolf had not had enough reservations about their parents—her father told him what to do all day, and her mother told him how to do it—and look what happened. Rosanna had been more independent, at least more than Rolf. And Eloise was practically a renegade. And then there were the three boys (now all grown up—Kurt worked in Mason City, Gus was married to an Irish girl who hated farming, and John worked for her father). Six children, six different degrees of love and respect for her parents, and occasional discussions about exactly in what ways Mary and Otto Vogel deserved what they had gotten.

  Henry came back into the kitchen and went over to the sink and washed his hands. He was good about that, and about doing all kinds of things that Frank and Joe had never cared about, like taking his supper plate to the sink and, for goodness’ sake, changing his underwear. Henry did what Lillian did, and Lillian was perfect. But Henry did not look into his mama’s eyes and adore her. Rosanna set a bowl on the table in front of him, a bowl with a thin rim, and next to that she set two smaller bowls, and the egg beater. He looked up at her eagerly. She said, “Okay, Henry. Now, remember—what should you remember?”

  “Crack them good, so the shell breaks rather than crumples.”

  “Right.”

  “Then put the white first in this small white bowl, and then, if it’s clean, pour it into the big bowl.”

  “Okay, get started.”

  While he was cracking the eggs in his direct but careful way (no wonder he had learned to sew—his hands were amazingly adept; Minnie always complimented his penmanship, too; maybe Henry was the genius she was looking for?), she buttered and floured the tube pan and looked for the old 7 Up bottle that she hung the pan on to cool after it came out of the oven. She said, “What sort of jam do you want to ice it with?”

  “Strawberry!” said Henry.

  “Claire’s favorite,” said Rosanna.

  “I love Claire,” said Henry. Rosanna did not ask why, but she thought of it.

  IT TURNED OUT that Eunice was in his English class. Frank saw her across the room the first day, but he came in late and was sitting beside the door—she was in the front row and didn’t see him. The professor, a very old man, mumbled on and on about Alexander Pope and a poem Frank hadn’t read yet called “The Rape of the Lock.” Frank couldn’t hear him very well, because the pane of the window next to his seat was rattling in the west wind. It was six weeks since Lawrence’s death. Eunice looked as if nothing at all had happened—she was wearing the same green sweater she’d had on the day they drove him to the hospital. As he sat there, Frank felt absolute hatred for Eunice begin to soak through him. And hatred for Lawrence, too, that he’d taken up with this cold fish, this self-important bitch whose body temperature was 88.6 rather than 98.6. Frank dragged his gaze away from Eunice, across the front of the room, the podium, the blackboard, the backs of the heads of the other students, and looked out the window. It was snowing, but not blizzarding—the path across the campus in front of the building had a white dust on it. Hildy and her brother, who was a freshman, had an avid love of snow, and of skiing—any kind of skiing. The smallest hill was fun for them, and the fact that Birger Ruud, of Norway, had won the gold in ski jumping at the ’36 Winter Olympics was a matter of personal pride. Hildy’s brother, Sven, thought ski jumping was the ultimate sport, way more important than baseball, for instance. It was windy out there—first he saw someone slip and sit down on the pavement, a professor-looking type, then he saw a girl’s scarf blow right off her head, and though the girl grabbed for it, it blew away.

  Toward the end of the class, Eunice happened to look around, yawning, and to see him. She didn’t smile, but she did keep looking. After a moment, she lifted her fingers in a wave.

  She was first to the door, but she waited for him, and he couldn’t avoid her. Without even greeting him, she murmured, “I came by your room, but you were at work.”

  “Yeah,” said Frank.

  “I want to give you something.”

  “What?”

  “Some photos Lawrence took. There are about ten of them. You and him over where your tent is. Dead animal skins in the background. He’s in four of them with you. You want them?”

  “You know my address. Mail them.”

  “I can bring them to class Wednesday.”

  They walked down the hallway, then down the stairs and out the big front door. She turned left, and marched away without saying anything more.

  It was lunchtime, so he was going to meet Hildy at the Union. She was standing beside the wall that commemorated the dead from the Great War, and as she turned toward him, he said, “Lot more names coming to this wall.”

  She said, “Yeah, it’s terrible in Norway.” But she said “ja,” which struck him as funny. “The ones who can’t run away are eating their shoes.” He glanced at her. She looked pained, not joking. She pulled his arm tight around herself and leaned into him. They went up the stairs and into the dining hall.

  “I saw Eunice.”

  “Oh, poor Eunice.”

  “I don’t think she cares.”

  “Of course she cares. She’s heartbroken. They wer
e going to get married.”

  “She says.”

  “Well, they hadn’t bought the ring yet.” She turned her eyes toward him and then away. Her eyes were always such a surprise. “But they’d looked at them.”

  “He would have told me.”

  “Maybe he thought it was private.”

  “Maybe she thought she’d caught him.”

  “I don’t know why you hate her. She’s nice.”

  “For a buck,” said Frank.

  Hildy stared at him. “I know you’re putting that on. I know you don’t mean that.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it, then said, “But I do.”

  “Oh, Frankie darling. You don’t mean half the things you say. You’re a softie in the middle.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Just then, some of Hildy’s friends headed their way. He knew they thought he was a little scary but interesting, an A student, mysterious. Not one of them knew that his father was a farmer from Denby, forty miles away. He thought that was the funny part.

  LILLIAN AND JANE HAD a fight. In eight and a half years of school, they had never had a fight, so Lillian was floored, not only at Jane for saying, “You think Phil is a goof; well, he’s not, and I’m tired of you being such a snob!” but also at herself for saying, “Open your eyes, Jane, he is a goof!” And he was, but goofy guys were everywhere, and what did Lillian care if one of them had attached himself to Jane? The top of his head came up to Jane’s nose, and he was always laughing, ha-huh-ha-huh, and if he ever had a handkerchief, Lillian would be thunderstruck. Still, he was nice enough, she didn’t dislike him, and he was in three of her classes. But Jane stood by the flagpole outside of the school when all the kids were waiting for the hack and shouted at her, “Stop being such a snob! Stop being such a snob!” And when Jane burst into tears, Lillian actually looked around to see who she was yelling at, and she saw the other kids looking at her.

  The next day was the worst day of her life. It started at breakfast, when she had Claire on her lap, and Claire gagged up some sausage and it landed on her white blouse, which she had pressed the night before; then she argued with Mama about whether you could still see the spot, and flounced up to her room to change, but there was nothing that went with that skirt, so she had to put on an outfit she had already worn that week. While she was dressing, she saw the hack pass outside the window, and so she had to run to catch it, all the way past Minnie and Lois’s house, so she was out of breath and her hair was a mess by the time she was sitting in her seat. Lillian knew that she was a perfectionist, and that that was a bad thing, but sitting there, and then after she got down and went into school, she could not stop thinking about the wrong things—her outfit and her hair, and her feeling that she was already late to everything for the rest of the day. One look at Jane, in math class, sitting with Betty Halladay, told her that Jane was still furious with her; both she and Betty stared at Lillian for a long time before turning their gaze away.