Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

  THE WHOLE TIME that twenty-two hundred dollars was out in the world, Frank thought about it every night, and the time seemed to pass with infinite slowness. It was accompanied by another feeling that Frank didn’t understand at all, something that came to him just before he fell asleep, or just as he woke up—something new, much deeper and more pervasive than mere fear of losing money that six months ago they hadn’t known existed. The feeling had nothing to do with nightmares; once he was dreaming of trying to get to the grocery store, and had this sensation and awoke panting. It had nothing to do with his life. He felt it at work only as a shadow, he felt it at home only as a reason not to go to bed. It didn’t locate itself—he did not look at Andy and imagine her getting hit by a car, he did not look at his hamburger and think of food poisoning. His mother would have said, and had often said, that Frank didn’t have the sense to be afraid. So maybe this was a visitation of some sort—senseless and inchoate, but colored orange, and peopled with small figures. What was frightening about them was nothing that his conscious mind recognized. But he felt it. Some nights he felt it so strongly that he got up and poured himself a shot of whiskey.

  He didn’t say a word to Andy, though if he woke up from one of these episodes he took her hand. When he mentioned it to Arthur, Arthur was too literal about it—Stalin had the bomb now, people in the know (did he remember von Neumann, who worked at Los Alamos?) were convinced he would use it, and Arthur himself was thinking of relocating to Maryland, because if a bomb hit D.C. the nuclear plume would be carried by weather patterns away from some towns and toward others. A friend of his whom he trusted had moved to Frederick, but it was a forty-mile commute.…

  If Andy noticed anything wrong, she didn’t say a word. Frank doubted that whatever it was had to do with the war, and he had nothing around the house that reminded him of the war—his one piece of memorabilia, if you could call it that, was a picture of his father and two of his World War I buddies, so faded that the three young men were almost indistinguishable. Sometimes Frank peered at it, trying to feel something about this boy, his father, or to make a connection between the day the picture was resurrected and what he himself had been doing at the time—at boot camp, scrambling around in the underbrush in the Ozarks. But nothing clicked.

  In the summer, with all the windows in the duplex wide open and them sitting in whatever breeze there was, dripping with sweat, the baby seemed to be developing at about a cell per second. Andy declared that she would never have a fall baby again, but what was the proper season? She hated being as big as a house in the hot weather, but did you really want the throwing up all summer and then to have to buy a whole hideous wardrobe for the winter? It was a conundrum. Sometimes she stood in front of her closet and said, “I can see everything going out of style while I am watching it.” On the whole, though, Frank thought she looked good—she was tall, and from behind you didn’t even realize that she was pregnant until the last month. Her ankles didn’t swell, like Lillian’s, and she got around fine. She took walks around the neighborhood. There were pregnant women and new babies everywhere; the discussion of their every need and desire went on day and night. They talked about the investment only once, when Andy said, “It was funny money. I never heard of Uncle Jens. We’ve still got our savings and the GI Bill.” There were houses in Levittown that now came with not only a carport but also a television and the antenna. They went to see the models twice.

  When Rubino called him up around the first of October and said he had seven grand for him, Frank couldn’t believe his ears. Rubino was living in Washington Heights for the time being, so Frank met him at a bar not far from the old Sperry plant in Lake Success. As he entered the bar and peered around for Rubino, Frank decided that probably Rubino was in the neighborhood because he had some plan for the Sperry plant, which was now housing the United Nations while that building was under construction. If Rubino could screw a dime out of each of the United Nations, Frank thought, he would consider it his greatest victory.

  As soon as Rubino saw Frank, he patted his jacket, over the pocket, but Frank knew anyway that he was going to have to talk the little wop out of his money. Rubino was in a good mood, and deep into his third Scotch and soda. Frank ordered a martini. Frank said, “What’s going on here at Lake Success? This whole neighborhood is wearing little hats. I didn’t think it was your kind of place.”

  “Yarmulkes. They’re called yarmulkes, and you’re gonna learn to say that word and a dozen others if you’re going to stop sounding like the rube you are.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like ‘schmuck.’ ”

  “I know what a schmuck is. Private.”

  They both took another sip of their drinks. Rubino patted his jacket again. Then he said, “I’ve got another idea.”

  “I want to see the fruits of the first idea.”

  Rubino leaned on the bar and looked up at Frank, then slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out an envelope. The envelope was fat. He set it on Frank’s knee and said, “You lucked out, Corporal.”

  “I should hope so.”

  Rubino shrugged, finished his drink, and said, “Not everyone did. The turnpike could have gone another way. We bought some property along that right of way, too.” He lifted a finger; when the bartender came over, he ordered another Scotch. Frank had never seen him drink this much, and guessed that was why he had let it out about the other investment.

  “I’m not going to count it right now.”

  “Do what you want, Corporal. But I’m telling you, this place around here, you have a look at it. You know what? It’s moving closer to the city, and for that reason, it’s filling right up. Good air. View of the bay. Sid Caesar lives here. You know who that is?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Funniest guy now living. You’ve heard of the Marx Brothers, anyway.”

  “Maybe.”

  “They live here, too. I’m looking at four lots. Big ones. Enough for six houses, anyway, because they’re all contiguous. We hold on to those for a year, and we triple our dough.”

  “How much dough are we tripling?”

  “You put in your seven, you triple that.”

  “How much are you putting in?”

  “Ten, more or less.”

  “I’ll think about it,” said Frank.

  “Well, stop thinking about it tomorrow, because I got to make the offer.”

  “One of those Levittown houses is eight grand. Free and clear.”

  “You don’t make money on where you live,” said Rubino.

  Frank wouldn’t have said that he was actually angry when they walked out of the bar fifteen minutes later. It was another one of those feelings he had that he didn’t understand—he had the envelope safely in his own inside jacket pocket, and because it was cold, he had buttoned his jacket and wrapped his scarf around his neck. They walked along. Down the street, Frank could see the blue Pontiac parked alongside a blank brick wall, the streetlight glaring across it turning it the color of sand, and maybe that was what triggered him. His own Studebaker was around the corner.

  Rubino put his hand in his coat pocket and pulled out his keys. A moment after that, Frank had him pinned against the brick wall, with his forearm at his neck, the way Rubino himself had once pinned Lieutenant Martin at Monte Cassino (was that really only six years ago?), and, as Rubino had done then, Frank felt his pockets for a weapon, which he did not find. He said, “I don’t want to be one of those investors who lost their money because you put it into the wrong piece of property, Rubino. Alex.” Rubino struggled. Frank pressed harder; Rubino gagged. Frank was six inches taller, and certainly outweighed the other man by thirty or forty pounds. Frank said, “I’ve learned a lot from you, Private.”

  Rubino’s arm flew out, but Frank caught it and pressed it against the wall. He said, “I just want to be clear about my intentions. If everyone loses, I don’t mind losing, too. I understand that. But if you gain, I gain. Got it?”

  Rubino ga
gged again, and Frank let him loose, just a little. Rubino coughed, and then said, in a hoarse voice, “I would never screw you, Corporal. You should know that.”

  “I will never forget you said that, Private.”

  Rubino put his hand to his neck and stretched his head upward, then nodded. Frank said, “You okay to drive?”

  Rubino shrugged, but got into his car. He didn’t seem all that surprised by what had happened, but he did seem a little more sober. Frank watched him pull away. Maybe there were two lessons Rubino was going to take away from this encounter, and one of them was to reduce his liquor consumption. The next day, Frank called to say that he would put six grand into the new project. Rubino sounded normal. He estimated nine to twelve months before they realized their investment, but no more than that. Frank thanked him. That feeling he’d had before falling asleep dissipated, didn’t even kick in when the baby was born. Frank put it out of his mind.

  ANDY NAMED her daughter (seven pounds, five ounces) Janet Ann, and Lillian named her son (seven pounds, seven ounces) Dean Henry. For Thanksgiving, Frank, Andy, and Janet, now six weeks old, took the train to Washington. Lillian had gotten a second bassinet for Janet. They would keep the bassinets downstairs during the day, and then carry them upstairs after supper. (Dinner—in Washington it was called dinner, but Lillian kept calling it supper, and Andy did, too. In that one way, Lillian thought, you knew she was from Decorah, Iowa, not Bedford Hills, New York.) They got there late Wednesday night, so Lillian didn’t really have a look at the baby girl until Thanksgiving morning. Dean was two weeks old, but Lillian felt fine. Once she came home from the hospital, Timmy and Debbie had her so on the go, anyway, that she hardly had time to rest. A three-hour labor, from the first pain to the birth, was nothing. She was getting to be like Mama, except that she didn’t get up the day the baby was born and go milk six cows before breakfast.

  Arthur laughed. “She never did that.”

  “No, but she did give birth to Henry all by herself, in Frank’s room, during harvest. Joe was the first one to see him when he went in to get a handkerchief. I guess he stood there blowing his nose. Frank and Papa were out harvesting corn, weren’t you?”

  Frank said, “I don’t remember.”

  “You do,” said Lillian, poking him.

  “Nothing,” said Frank.

  The weather was fairly good, so, before Lillian served the turkey at five, not so terribly early, Arthur and Frank took Timmy and Debbie for a long and, everyone hoped, exhausting walk about Georgetown, and she and Andy got down to seriously comparing the babies. They sat side by side on the sofa and laid the babies on their knees, facing upward. Bit by bit, they opened the blankets. Dean was too young to mind, but Janet was old enough to get a little fussy.

  Such a comparison, Lillian thought, might have been unfair to Dean, but he was about a week late, and had plenty of hair—Arthur’s hair, since it was dark. His nose had not been flattened in the quick birth, and he wasn’t terribly cross-eyed. He had long fingers and long feet, and slender arms and legs, just like Timmy, and look at him (if you dared—half the time he was getting into something). Like all blonds except Lillian herself, according to Mama, Janet had fine hair that would come in late, but she had a little crown of gold around her head, and two beautiful dimples. Andy said, “I’m not sure dimples are the wave of the future.” Janet’s eyes were bluer, and her lips were already full and distinct. Her birth length had been twenty-one and a half inches. Lillian, who wasn’t tall, said, “She is going to be tall,” and Andy, who was tall, said, “There’s a mixed blessing for you.”

  “But you’ve already lost the weight, and look at me. I have so far to go.”

  “My mother said it always drops off faster with the first one.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. I have this feeling that it will be hard this time, and Arthur will not be helpful, since he likes butter, butter, butter and cream, cream, cream for every meal.”

  Andy turned and kissed her on the cheek. She said, “But I’m so flat-chested, even with nursing. If you go to that Dior boutique in New York, which I did every week from the seventh month on, just for inspiration, you see what it’s going to be—hourglass.”

  “If I ever get a waist again.”

  Lillian sighed and lifted Dean against her shoulder. Andy un-self-consciously opened her blouse and put Janet to the breast. Lillian didn’t say anything. Dean had finished his bottle a half-hour before. He was not a fussy baby, and took all of his formula every time. Andy said, “My mother said nursing takes the weight off. But she only had two.”

  Lillian could not help watching—she had never nursed any of the three, even for a day. The hospital where they were born seemed to find it distasteful and unhealthy. As she watched, she carefully suppressed a little pang of regret, until Andy said “Ouch!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, you know, the nipples are so tender. But supposedly that goes away.” Lillian didn’t say anything.

  When Arthur, Frank, and the kids came in, Frank said, “The weather is really strange out there. Don’t you ladies hear the windows rattling?”

  “It’s very dark to the west,” said Arthur. “I’m glad I reglazed the windows this summer.”

  Lillian said “Brr,” then, to Frank, “Remember that winter you went to Chicago in the blizzard? I didn’t know whether to be more afraid for you or more afraid for us. The snow was to the eaves.”

  “We did get stuck somewhere. Where was that? Before the river. Must have been around DeWitt. Some old ladies got me a berth so I could stay warm. It felt like a … a foxhole, I guess. Gave me nightmares.”

  Andy said, “We had such deep drifts in Decorah that my brother made himself a ski jump out a second-story window into the backyard. He would squat in a couple of shoeboxes and sail down.”

  Dinner was fine—the turkey only a little dry. Andy set the table, and the pumpkin pie she had brought was delicious, and so they yawned and dozed and went to bed.

  On Friday, the storm hit while they were sitting at breakfast—there was a shattering, crashing sound, and at the very moment Lillian said, “What’s that?” Timmy ran in from the living room and said, “Mommy, wind came through the glass!”

  They ran in, and there it was—glass all over the floor, a big branch cracked against the front of the house, and rain gusting through. Frank moved the bassinets into the dining room, and then he and Arthur went out and nailed a board over the window. Andy kept Timmy and Debbie in the kitchen while Lillian swept up the glass.

  Once the antenna blew off the house, there was no television of any kind (Lillian enjoyed television—not so much for the programs, which she was running around too much to pay attention to, but for the friendly demeanor and the nice clothes of the stars), and shortly after that, no electricity. Arthur wrapped the refrigerator in a blanket and pinned it with clothespins, which made everyone laugh. They were warm enough—the furnace was coal—and Lillian had sterilized and filled her bottles for the day, but what if it lasted through tomorrow? She could fill them, since the stove was gas, but she would have to set them outside to keep them cool. Well, she wasn’t going to think about that. It did remind her of some of those weeks on the farm, stuck in the house with the whole place rattling. It was cozy, but there was an edge of threat, just as the rooms were warm but with the knife of a draft sailing through from time to time. Andy had two sweaters on, and was smoking about twice as much as she had the day before, carefully turning her head away from the baby, who was cradled in her left arm, half asleep. Lillian, who thought that babies were better off in their bassinets, said, “Was she up in the night?”

  “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 l
owered 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!”