Some Luck: A Novel

by Jane Smiley

They ate at a café on Iowa Avenue at the corner of Dubuque, and Henry ordered what Rosa ordered, which was dollar cakes with sausage and apple compote, orange juice, and a cup of coffee. Eloise had only the coffee and an English muffin. It was good that Henry was so practiced at keeping his thoughts to himself while carrying on a conversation as if he cared about it, because Eloise seemed satisfied that they were having a nice meal, while all the time Henry was taking inner snapshots of Rosa, smiling, frowning, rolling her eyes, laughing, eating, glancing out the window. Everything about her was plain and unglamorous—she wore no makeup, her shirt was like his, and she had a thrift-shop men’s vest from the twenties over it. Her gestures were graceful. If there was such a thing as love at first sight, Henry thought, this was it. He only remembered when they got in the car that the girl was his first cousin, that he had known her off and on his whole life, that after a week in Denby Eloise and Rosa were going back to San Francisco, exactly the wrong direction.

  When they got to his room, just to see it for a moment and so that he could pick up his suitcase, his roommate Mel was there, sitting on his bed in his pajamas, drinking milk from a bottle, and rubbing his chin. He glanced up, said hi, groaned, set the bottle on the floor, and fell back in his bed. Eloise stood in the doorway; Rosa came in and surveyed his bookshelf, her hands in the pockets of her peacoat. Mel didn’t even seem to see her.

  The car was from Hertz—Eloise had rented it in Chicago, a roomy Ford. Henry put his suitcase in the trunk, with theirs, and got right into the back seat—he wanted to watch Rosa for the couple of hours that it would take to get to Denby, but to do so naturally. Eloise asked him if he wanted to drive. He did not. He said, “So tell me all the bad stuff that Mama doesn’t want to know before we get home.”

  Eloise laughed, but then got serious. She said, “Well, it’s a nightmare, Henry. You must know that. I had to testify before the California Un-American Activities Committee for four days in November.”

  “What did you say?” said Henry.

  Rosa said, “Take the Fifth, take the Fifth, take the Fifth. I think she should have said ‘fuck you.’ ”

  Eloise said, “Thank you for that, darling. But it’s pretty clear. You have to just take the Fifth, because if you give them any excuse at all, even saying that you will tell about yourself but not about anyone else, that’s an admission that you have things to tell, and you can’t admit that or they will make you say them.”

  “Are you going to have to go to Washington? You could stay with Arthur and Lillian.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to them,” said Eloise. “If I go there, I will just keep to myself.”

  Henry sat forward. “What are you saying, Aunt Eloise?”

  Rosa said, “She’s saying that she can damage Arthur, but he can’t help her. We had to make sure that they weren’t going to be here before we came here. We did.” That she looked elegantly furious as she said this, Henry found entrancing. “People we know in Oakland said that I should change my name, because it’s so obvious who I was named for.”

  “Who were you named for?”

  “Rosa Luxemburg and Sylvia Pankhurst.”

  “Who were they?”

  Rosa said, “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  Eloise said, “Rosa Luxemburg wrote ‘Leninism or Marxism?’ and Sylvia Pankhurst was a suffragette.”

  Henry looked out the window. They were past Marengo now, going through the snowy black-and-white woods that would soon give way to the open prairies along Highway 30. He found himself touching the scar where Mama had sewn his lip with a length of silk thread, him screaming in Lillian’s lap. He imagined it turning red (it was actually whiter than the rest of his skin, and smaller in the mirror than it sometimes felt), and put his hand in his lap.

  Rosa said, “I’m certainly not going to change my name.”

  Henry watched the way she reached back and rolled her hair around her hand, then tossed her head.

  “We’re not movie stars. We aren’t important enough to be blacklisted,” said Eloise. “I’m not a teacher. I’m not working for the government anymore. And Rosa’s father was a war hero. I think we’re safe enough, personally, but that’s why it’s best to keep ourselves to ourselves for the time being. Rosa consorts with outcasts, anyway, so no problem there.”

  “Who do you consort with?” said Henry.

  She said, “Poets. I babysit for Kenneth Rexroth. He has a little girl.”

  Henry did not say that he hadn’t heard of this person. He said, “I wish I did that.”

  “You do?” said Eloise. “That’s funny. There was an Iowa professor who sponsored a leftist peace conference I went to a couple of years ago, McGalman, something like that.”

  “McGalliard?” said Henry.

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I see him almost every day. We’re reading Beowulf. I’m going to do my senior thesis with him.”

  “Are you surprised?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, everyone sponsored that conference. Judy Holliday sponsored that conference. Albert Einstein sponsored that conference. Smart people were fighting to get on the list.”

  “May I come visit you after I graduate?” said Henry. “I bet I can get into Berkeley.” His hand moved toward the scar again—a habit he thought he’d broken. That was how he knew that Rosa was affecting him.

  “I bet you can,” said Eloise.

  “Oh,” said Rosa, “you should.”

  That was enough for now.

  1953

  WALTER SLIPPED OUT of the house before Rosanna was awake and headed east, toward the rising sun. The air was clear and bracing, and he just wanted to look over the fields before planting commenced and the fields turned into a task that maybe he was no longer up to. There were so many acres they had to plant now that he was resolute about doing his share. The big house and the barn showed no signs of life, so even Joe wasn’t up yet. They had injected the anhydrous, at least—that was the nerve-racking part, and the fact that they themselves hadn’t yet had an accident wasn’t much solace. Rosanna’s brother John had accidentally disconnected the hose and released a white cloud of the stuff, and it was a good thing he was fast and the breeze took it away from the house. No real damage done, just a scare, and a warning.

  Walter had to admit that the Easter trip to see the babies had taken more out of him than he’d expected, and it was not the train ride that did it (Frank paid for a roomette, and that was pretty comfortable). They’d gone first to Washington and seen Tina (Christina), who was quite a large child—nine pounds if you could believe it—and reminded Walter that any ancestor could crop up in a family, and if you kept crossing Angus and Herefords, sometimes you got a pure Hereford and sometimes you got a pure Angus, and sometimes you got a combination of the two. In this case, Lillian and Arthur had gotten a Cheek, and no doubt about it—thick, straight dark hair, pale-blue eyes, white skin, and intense gaze. But at least she was healthy. The same could not be said for Frank and Andy’s twins, the larger of whom was Richard, five pounds five ounces at birth, and then the surprise—the doctor had said, “And what do we have here?”—that was Michael, five pounds even (“And fortunate to be that,” said the doctor; “you must have eaten a lot of ice cream, my girl, and be glad you did”). The twins were in incubators still, after a month, and not expected to come home for another week. Walter didn’t know what to think of that. He had only seen them once, during a brief visit to the hospital. Rosanna kept saying she was sure they would be fine.

  Of course, the real surprise was Ann Frederick Langdon, born February 14, and a valentine by any measure. She didn’t look like Lois and she didn’t look like Joe, she looked like Lillian, and was just that same sort of child—“angel” stamped all over her, said Rosanna. “Lois loved Lillian as a child,” said Joe, and Walter said, “Well, you know, back in the old days, when my father was breeding horses, he used to bring his best-looking yearling out of the barn and walk it in a circle around every mare right a
fter the stallion bred her, just to give her the proper idea of what to produce.” Now Miss Ann was two months old, gazing at everything in animated fascination, and that other thing was true, too, that your grandchild was much more of a treat than any of your children could ever be. Joe changed the baby—something that Walter had never done, but the sort of thing that Joe would do.

  Walter had passed the barn and the Osage-orange hedge, but now he headed back in that direction. Ah, the damn thing was thriving. The leaves were pushing their way out on every one of the spurs that had grown where he’d clipped the thing the year before. The leaves were the brightest green in the world, maybe in the universe—flat and waxy and full of themselves, protected by the thorns. Every year, Joe said, as Walter always had, that he was going to pull it up, but he never did—the roots had probably spread everywhere, and taking the thing out would be a major pain in the neck. There was always a reason not to bother. Walter touched one of the thorns. He was used to the hedge, but the thorns still seemed menacing.

  JOE WAS in his own barn, behind the big house, when Rosanna entered. She was wearing her robe, her nightgown, and a pair of rubber boots. Her hair was hanging in a gray, disheveled braid, and her eyes were wide. She didn’t say a thing, she just came to him and grabbed his hand. He dropped the wrench he was holding and followed her out. He said, “Mama! Mama! What’s going on?” But she still didn’t answer, and that was how he knew. The only mystery was that he expected her to take him to the house, and she took him to the barn, and beyond there, around the Osage-orange hedge, and there was Papa in his overalls, folded on his side, his arms crossed over his chest, his back to the hedge. Rosanna said, “I don’t know why he left. I was asleep. He just left. He just left.”

  Joe stood still for a moment, and then they both knelt, and he could think of nothing to do other than to put his palm over Walter’s forehead. It was cool. His mother said, “I looked all over the barn, and then I came out here, and some crows were in that tree there, making a lot of noise, so I—” She stood, crossed her arms over her robe, then said, “Goodness gracious, Walter!” Joe took off his jacket and laid it over Walter, but did not, in the end, cover his face. He had to pretend that his father was merely sleeping one last time. Rosanna said, “Walk me to the house. I’ll call the undertaker. I guess we’ll use the same one we used for Grandpa Wilmer. I’m so sorry your grandmother lived to see this.” She held Joe’s arm and they stepped carefully.

  Joe said, “Do you think it was his heart?”

  “I think it was something he knew was coming, which was why he refused to go to the doctor after Dr. Craddock died. Oh, dear me. What a stubborn man!” She put the crook of her robe-clad elbow up to her eyes, then said, “No, Joey. Don’t walk with me. I know the way. You go back and sit with him till the undertaker comes. I’ll call Frank and Lillian and Henry. Claire can stay home from school today, too.” Joe let her arm go and watched her walk away, hunched and busy, plopping through the field in those mucky boots. Then he turned and went back to Walter. He stood for a moment, and sat down. From here, he could see the last thing his father had looked at—the long stretch of plowed land to the east, the gently curving, flat horizon, and just the tops of the Grahams’ old windbreak—they had planted blue spruces, but only a few survived. He had seen birds, Joe hoped—at the moment, there were a couple of red-tailed hawks floating on a draft. Off to the right, maybe he had seen the upper story and the roof of Joe’s house, Lois’s house, Minnie’s house, Ann’s house now, where Lois was certainly wondering where he was and Minnie was getting ready for school.

  It was too bad, Joe thought, that this present quiet had to give way to the movement and bustle of a funeral and a burial, but that was, of course, what Walter would expect. Joe thought the better thing would be to sink into the earth right in this spot, to be here where everyone in the family could run past each day and offer a greeting or a memory. Joe took a few deep breaths and edged a little closer to Walter one last time. He closed his eyes and listened to the air scudding along the surface of the earth, and as the day warmed, fragrance rose to envelop him.

  AS SOON AS Claire woke up, she thought of the biscuits. Over the weekend, when Claire was supposed to be babysitting for Annie, Lois had let Claire make three batches, each time mounding the flour, cutting in the butter, sprinkling on the salt and the baking powder, then, as quickly as possible, with a few pats and prods, pushing the dough together, rolling it out, and—pop, pop, pop—cutting it with the biscuit cutter. The difference between Lois and Mama was that for Lois there was no picking up the leftover dough and prodding it into a less delicious second batch. Lois cut the outlines into randomly shaped biscuits and set them on another baking sheet; when those came out of the oven, she said, “Here’s what you need to know about geometry. Taste this.”

  They were crispy, flaky, and buttery—all edges, no centers. Claire walked into the empty kitchen, dressed and ready for the school bus. It took her five minutes to get out the flour, the butter, the baking powder, and the salt. Her batch would be a surprise for Papa. The night before, she’d been reading Jo’s Boys—late, just the little light on beside her bed—when he’d knocked on the door and peeped in. His hair was standing on end. He smiled and came in, sat on the bed. When he saw what she was reading, he laughed and said, “Well, at least that’s something I can make head or tail of,” and then, “Your mama is a hare and I am a tortoise, and, Claire, I sure hope you can find another creature to be, because I don’t think either of those works.”

  She had given him a little kiss on the cheek and said that she would be a cat.

  He said, “That’s a good one, sweetie,” and went down the stairs to the bathroom.

  The oven was always lit for warmth, so when she tested the temperature by sticking her hand in (it was plenty hot), she didn’t wonder where Mama was. Mama couldn’t stay away from Annie, and she was always tramping across the south field to Joe’s house, wondering if they needed anything. Papa, of course, would be in the barn, the first place he went every morning. Claire had heard him, almost before dawn, going down the stairs, coughing, talking to himself. That was how she knew that the day had begun: when she began to wake up and think—what was she going to wear, what did she have to do, what was there to put up with, what was there to look forward to. She had started her day like this for as long as she could remember.

  Her hands didn’t work as quickly or as lightly as Lois’s, and she had to push her glasses up her nose with her wrist, but the biscuits looked handsome as they went into the oven, round and tall, three across and four down. As she was closing the oven door, Mama blew in and exclaimed, “What in the world are you doing?”

  “Making bis—”

  “Oh, good Heaven! Oh, good Heaven!” said Mama. “Who’s going to eat them?”

  “Papa will.”

  “No, no, no!” exclaimed Mama.

  It was long after the moment when Claire knew that Papa was dead (though what she imagined was not him lying under the Osage-orange hedge, but him lying in the middle of the road, flat on his back) that Mama actually said the words. Mama started crying and coughing, then sniffling and blowing her nose, and as long as the words were not said, Claire didn’t have to react, didn’t have to feel that thing that she was going to feel, that thing that was like an empty house with the windows smashed and the paint peeling and the pillars of the porch broken and the porch roof itself collapsing, which was something she had never seen, but became something she would never forget.

  About the Author

  Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, as well as five works of nonfiction and a series of books for young adults. In 2001 she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2006 she received the PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in northern California.

  An A.A. Knopf Reading Group Guide

  Some Luck by Jane Smiley

  The que
stions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Some Luck, the engrossing, vividly textured new novel by beloved Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jane Smiley.

  Discussion Questions

  1. What do you think the title means? Whose luck does it refer to? Is it only good or bad luck, or does the word “luck” shift in connotation as the novel goes forward?

  2. Each chapter in the novel takes place over the course of one year. How does Smiley use this structure to propel her story?

  3. Rosanna assigns personality traits to each of her children in infancy. When those traits prove true, do you think it’s because of nurture—her and Walter’s influence—or nature—personalities fully formed at birth?

  4. How does Smiley use the children’s points of view at all ages—including when they are very small—to show their development and coming-of-age in real time? What are some of the memorable traits that carry from infancy to young adulthood for each of the five children?

  5. How does Mary Elizabeth’s death affect Rosanna? How does it change her relationship with the children who follow?

  6. Throughout the story, Frank is described as persistent, if not out-right stubborn. How does this quality help him in his life? Does it hinder him?

  7. Variations on the story of Lucky Hans appear several times in the novel, including the version told by Opa to Frank in 1924, Lillian’s version remembered by Henry in 1947, and Arthur’s tale of Frank and the golden egg in 1952. What point is Smiley making by changing the mythology?

  8. Over the course of the three decades Some Luck spans, various characters embrace or resist new technology—Walter and the tractor, Rosanna and electricity, Joey’s farming techniques, Frank’s study of German warfare. How does Smiley use their reactions to deepen our understanding of these characters and to show the pas-sage of time?