Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  “Well, she’s learned by this time to stand there with her hands over her eyes and let him do it himself. If she doesn’t, he’ll try again when he gets the chance. I hear you were exactly the same way.”

  Frank glanced across the breakfast table at Andy and said, “Maybe it skips a generation.”

  As they neared the bus stop, Frank saw that the bus was pulling up. Arthur took his elbow and kept him moving. The next bus was in twenty minutes. Arthur headed across the street toward the park, even though the morning was bitter cold, and Frank followed.

  The quarry this time was a very wealthy man, and Frank, and especially Andrea, were perfect for this. Arthur would get them invited to certain parties; Andrea would dazzle everyone and bit by bit Frank would get to know the man. He was a little older than Frank, and had spent the war as a bomber pilot, done good service, was now running an art gallery. He was very wealthy—had money, married money—and was very well traveled. That was what interested Arthur. If this fellow was not a courier for the Reds, then they were missing out on an excellent opportunity. But if he had a code name, there was no hint of it. If the transcripts of espionage traffic between Washington and Moscow from the war were complete, this fellow was clean. “He shouldn’t be clean,” said Arthur. “He was friends with the others. Good friends.”

  “What others?” said Frank.

  “You’ll find out,” said Arthur.

  “Will I?” said Frank.

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you going to pay me this time?”

  “Not in cash. I can’t pay you in cash, because it’s not part of my job to ask you to do this. I’m just asking you because you’re good and you enjoy it.” He stopped walking and looked Frank in the eye. “We’re about to arrest someone, you know.”

  They stared at one another for a long minute, then Arthur said, “Look, brother, one side of my government agency is out of control—I would say nuts, though only right here, in the middle of the park in the howling wind, would I say that. They have all the money and all the excitement, and we have paper and pencils and some stuff to read and think about. The slower we go, the crazier they get. My seven dwarves and I are reading, reading, reading, twelve hours a day. When Lillian and the kids go to bed, I work for another three hours. How I am going to impregnate her again, I have no idea.”

  They started walking back toward the bus stop.

  “But you helped me gain respectability around the agency with our last adventure, and as a result, when a certain fellow agent suggested that we go ahead and hire forty-two ex-Nazis to infiltrate the Polish government, I was able to say that I didn’t think this was a good idea. When your former quarry is arrested, it will be a nice distraction, and considerable resources will be devoted to hounding her. The very handsome gentleman that you will now befriend will cause an even greater brouhaha, so I pray to the Lord that he is busy as a bee sending information to someone in Moscow code-named, say, Binky. And”—Arthur gave him a little poke in the ribs with his elbow—“if he’s on the up-and-up, you’ll have gotten to know one of the biggest boys on the block.”

  By the time the bus came, Frank was ready to begin, and he only half understood why. He had meant to be paid. Was it that Arthur had a way about him, knew how to draw him in, knew how to say “Moscow” in a certain uneasy way (and was it that he owed Arthur a little something for the translation job and now the Grumman job—Arthur never made that argument, but maybe that was because he thought Frank’s obligations were obvious)? Or was it that the adventure itself was the pleasure, that this was his path out of routine domesticity, back to his years in the tent, his years in the war, his years making trouble as a matter of course? Whatever it was, Arthur seemed to have his number.

  THEY WERE DIFFERENT from the way they had been in college. It was almost enough to make Frank believe in that thing called maturity. He didn’t try to talk to her—he just did talk to her. If she was in the room and he was thinking about something, he expressed it, whatever it was. He remembered Lawrence fondly, of course, but those boys they had been seemed terribly young to him now. He thought of them as little heads peering over the steering wheel of the giant Flying Cloud, their feet barely reaching the pedals. One night, he lay in bed with Andy before falling asleep and talked about Lawrence. Andy said, “You know, that was the first person I ever knew who died. Three of my grandparents were still alive at that point, and my grandfather died in the first war, so I was just so amazed. And I was the one who was supposed to comfort Eunice. I felt like a baby. She ended up comforting me.”

  “She seemed, I don’t know,” said Frank, “like she didn’t care all that much. I hated her for that.”

  Andy took a drag on her cigarette and placed it carefully in the ashtray. She turned to him. Frank hadn’t meant to say anything about Eunice. That the remark had slipped out was a sign of how different he felt with Andy from how he had with Hildy. She put her hand on his chest. A bright shaft from the streetlight outside slid between the imperfectly closed curtains to light up the top of her head and split her face in two. She said, “Honey, do you think we couldn’t tell you were furious with her? But at that point she didn’t care all that much for him. She was about to break up with him when he got that infection.”

  “You said they were going to get married.”

  “That’s what she told me and his parents right then, but later she told me the truth.” She took his hand. “Baby, I was fond of Lawrence, but you loved him best.” Then she said, “I thought maybe, when you got into the army, you might make another friend like that.”

  When the storm started a few hours later and woke them both up, she was lying on her back, half uncovered, and Frank was pressed against her, his face in her hair. Thunder must have awakened him, but when the lightning struck, the first thing that he was aware of was her fragrance, a mixture of sleep and the L’Air du Temps he had given her for Valentine’s Day. She turned toward him just then, and he was thrilled to the point of disorientation by the smooth weight of her in his arms. He kissed her all over her neck and in her hair, underneath her ears, along the ridge of her shoulders, everywhere. He slipped the straps of her nightgown down her arms while she lifted the elastic of his boxer shorts carefully over his cock. He could not wait to be inside her, Andrea, Andy, Hildy, this woman, that child. For once he needed no encouragement, no reassurance—was that what it was? Whatever it was, it was a relief to simply want her, to find her flesh and her scent and the wave of her hair and the sound of her voice magnetically alluring, first from the front, as usual, and then again from behind, which she was not quite prepared for but found ravishing. And then they were awake until the alarm rang, and as he turned it off, Andy said, “Well, my parents never told me about this sort of thing.”

  “What was that?” said Frank.

  “That you could go to bed married and wake up remarried.” After that, they got up and performed their usual routine, but, as if by common consent, they said nothing practical, made no plans. They had gone back to being strangers, and it was the most romantic thing Frank had ever known.

  JAMES HAGGARD UPJOHN and his wife, Frances Travers Upjohn, were shaking hands in a receiving line at the Metropolitan Museum of Art when Frank first saw them. Frank was standing behind Andy, who had borrowed a Dior gown from a connection she had at Bergdorf’s. Frank himself had invested in a tux, and, looking at Jim Upjohn, he suspected that he was going to give the thing plenty of wear. The cocktail party was for an opening, the biggest since the war, of a show of Greek and Roman art. Andy was now three people away from James Upjohn. Now two. Now one. Andy held out her hand, and Upjohn turned from the old lady he had been talking to and raised his eyes. Andy said, “Mr. Upjohn. Thank you so much. Lovely to meet you.”

  Upjohn’s face, which had looked professionally good-natured, shifted through several different expressions just in the time that it took Andy to smile—they were confusion, surprise, pleasure. He said, “Thank you for coming. I’m sure we haven’t
met before.” Frances Travers Upjohn’s head swiveled to the right. Andy said, “Of course not. We are new in town. I’m Andrea Langdon, and this is my husband, Frank.” Frank held out his hand. Upjohn’s grip was brisk and manly—up, down, out. He also gave the tiniest bow, a flattering thing that acknowledged in its half-second of existence that Andy, and therefore Frank, could expect to see more of James Haggard Upjohn, Esq. Frank could not help looking a little extra merry as they proceeded down the line.

  The entrance hall at the Met, now decorated with casts of all sorts of famous old statues (Frank recognized the Winged Victory and the Laocoön), was a far cry from Floral Park, but Frank had prowled all over the museum once Arthur had arranged the invitation. He had memorized the names of pictures and artists (Raphael, Picasso, Maillol), so that he could at least pretend familiarity. He didn’t have a terrible eye—standing in front of the Maillol female nude, next to the cast of Aphrodite, he could get interested enough in the similarities so that when Jim Upjohn appeared next to him and spoke, he started a little. Upjohn offered him a smoke. Frank said, “Don’t do that. Thanks, though.”

  Upjohn said, “Who are you two? I’ve never seen you before.”

  “Just hicks,” said Frank. “Newly arrived in the big city.”

  “How’d you get into this party?” He said it not suspiciously but with true curiosity, like a kid. If this guy was a spy, Frank thought, he would eat his hat. Frank said, “Andrea knows everyone.”

  “I would like her to know me.”

  “That’s what they all say,” said Frank. “Thank you for stating your business so clearly.”

  Upjohn grinned. “That isn’t my business. Mrs. Upjohn makes sure of that. But in a dull town full of dull people, when new prospects turn up, one gets a little excited.”

  “Are we still in Des Moines?”

  “Even New York is a small town if there are only four hundred respectable folks and half of those have chips on their shoulders.”

  “I can’t imagine you have offended anyone,” said Frank.

  “I haven’t, but I have lots of relatives.”

  After the cocktails, during the dancing, Upjohn cut in on Frank and Andy twice. Frank went straight over and asked Frances to dance, and he was so good at leading her and spinning her and sweeping her around the room that she squeezed his hand when the music stopped.

  Frank reported to Arthur that he had made contact, and that Upjohn would certainly be making a pass at Andy before the month was out.

  “Think of it as your patriotic duty,” said Arthur.

  “I’ll try,” said Frank.

  But the next time they met, at a gallery opening two weeks later, Upjohn followed Frank out into the street when Frank went to get some air, and they gabbed for fifteen minutes. In his report to Arthur, Frank said, “I think he’s grooming me for something.”

  “Did you say anything about Eloise?”

  “No. Why Eloise?”

  “Well, we’re watching her. Maybe they’re watching her, too.”

  “Why are you watching Eloise? She hates Stalin with a passion. She tells Rosa that Stalin and Mountbatten killed her father. On Halloween, they name two jack-o’-lanterns ‘Joe’ and ‘Lou,’ and the day after, they smash them with sticks.”

  “She talks to Browder. There’s a file.”

  “Well, I guess you know more about her than I do. When I saw her last Thanksgiving, she didn’t say a word about the Party. I assumed she’d quit and gone over to Shachtman’s Socialists.”

  “I’m not worried about Eloise. But keep your eye on Upjohn. And—”

  “Is there a file on Upjohn?”

  “More than one,” said Arthur. “It’s chaos, all these files. Anyway …”

  “Anyway what?” said Frank.

  “You should be aware that she’s been arrested.”

  Involuntarily, Frank thought of his last breakfast with Judy, the red velvet birthday cake, the look of her face, pale through the window of the streetcar, and maybe more dumbstruck than he had admitted at the time. He said, “How sure are you that she was passing documents?”

  “Caught her red-handed in Union Square. Caught Gubitchev, too. She had papers in her purse.”

  “What papers?”

  “Well, that’s interesting. Not bomb-making information or anything like that. She spies on us while we spy on them.”

  Frank said, “Don’t tell me any more. I kind of liked her.”

  “I don’t think she knows that you spied on her spying on us spying on them. But if she did, she might enjoy it.”

  “She did hate Hoover,” said Frank.

  “Well, he has recorded just about her every move since I made my report, so he has had his revenge.”

  ON JUNE 11, when Andy talked him into taking her to the Belmont Stakes, they were standing in line at a betting window when the Upjohns came right up to them. Frances Upjohn even kissed Andy on the cheek and said, “I love your suit, darling! Do you have a box?”

  And, easy as you please, Andy said, “A box of what?”

  They all laughed.

  Jim and Frances didn’t have a box, either, but they had borrowed one from Frances’s cousin, who had racehorses with a trainer named Hirsch Jacobs, right there at Belmont Park, though he had nothing in the big race that day.

  The box looked down on the finish line from above, and Andy fit right in, sitting gracefully, half turned toward Frances, with one gloved hand on her knee and the other holding her program and her patent-leather handbag. She was wearing that hat Frank liked. Her skirt swept down from her tiny waist and floated above the ground. Behind her head, the vast emerald infield of the racetrack was seething with men in rolled-up sleeves who had pencils behind their ears and Racing Forms in their hands. Frank said, “This must be the biggest lawn in New York.”

  “You could set the Brooklyn Bridge in there, did you know that?” said Jim.

  Jim and Frances peppered them with questions, and seemed gratified to learn that they were poor, that they rented their little apartment in Floral Park, that they had $751 in savings, that Frank worked at Grumman, grubbing for government contracts, that Andy was adept at remaking her clothes to keep them up-to-date, that Frank had seen two and a half years of steady action in the ETO—in the mud in the ETO, not the sky—that Frank had ended up with twenty-six kills (if you counted that German officer), that Frank didn’t know how to read the Racing Form and had never been to a race before. The oddest conversation, Frank thought, was about farming. Had Frank driven a plow or a harrow? Had he actually castrated a baby hog? How many chickens were in a flock? Did anyone farm with horses anymore? If he, Jim, were to buy a farm, was Pennsylvania better, or Ohio, or Minnesota, or Nebraska? Frank said, “Have you ever thought about this before, Jim?”

  Jim shook his head. “I never met a farmer before. I mean, other than a horse breeder who grows tobacco on part of his land.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Oh, once I thought of buying an apple orchard in the Catskills.” Frank couldn’t figure him out.

  In the race, Frank bet on Ponder, and Andy bet on Capot. She took home fifty dollars. On the way home (they waited until the Upjohns left, then walked the two miles), Andy declared that she was going to become a racetrack tout, and the fifty dollars was her investment fund. Frank said, “That’s not very Norwegian. Did you say your mother’s maiden name was Mahaffey?”

  “My mother’s maiden name was Carlson. But I do believe I’ve had a visitation.” She opened her pocketbook and looked at the money. Frank tightened his arm around her waist, and they walked around the neighborhood until after dark, giggling and joking.

  When Frank gave Arthur his final report in September, Arthur agreed with him that Jim Upjohn was a dead end. “He talks too much,” said Frank. “He told me that he still gives money to the Daily Worker every month, because he just can’t bring himself to stop, and then he offered to finance my down payment for a house in Levittown.”

  “He likes you.”

  �
�I think he likes everyone. When we got invited to a party at his house in Darien, there were a hundred people there. I told you I went around chatting everyone up, and everyone had a story of something Jim had given them or bought from them at an inflated price. He reminds me of a friend I had in college.”

  He reminded Andy of Lawrence, too.

  OF COURSE he bumped into Ruben at the racetrack. Where else would Ruben be? Frank and Andy were at the rail, watching a race, and jumping up and down because Andy had a bet on the leader, and when the race was over and they turned around to go cash her ticket, she nearly fell over Ruben, who chortled at her and then noticed Frank. The funny thing he did was hop into the air and grab Frank’s hat off his head, saying, “That you, Corporal? That you?”

  When Frank introduced Andy to Ruben, he realized that he had completely forgotten Ruben’s actual name—he hesitated over it so long that Ruben leaned forward and said to Andy, “Alex Rubino, ma’am. And this is my wife, Patricia De Oro Rubino.”

  And if Jim and Frances Upjohn were comfortable at Belmont Park up in the clubhouse with Whitneys and Vanderbilts, then Ruben and Patty were equally comfortable down by the rail, nattering on in Italian and Spanish (Patty had been born in Puerto Rico) with Giordanos and Sanchezes. Ruben walked with them to the betting windows, and then showed them his box—not so high up or close to the finish line as where the Upjohns sat, but well used. Ruben was in real estate now. He had used his GI Bill money to get a license. Frank and Andy sat with Ruben and Patty for the last two races. It got a little cold, and Patty put on her mouton coat, which Andy complimented. Yes, it was warm. Yes, it was the newest style. Andy said, “When I first met Frank, he used to shoot rabbits for their skins.”

  Ruben said, “Yeah, when I knew him, he was shooting things, too.”

  “Somebody had to do it,” said Patty.