Private Life

by Jane Smiley

  That was what won her in the end. Captain Early knew all about electricity, and it seemed to her, as he spread his arms and raised his hat off his head only to put it back on and laugh, that he was presenting her with a hidden and powerful force, asking her to observe and embrace it, while everyone else seemed capable only of gawking. And she did think, just then, that if it was meant for a man and a woman to share something with each other that they did not share with anyone else, then, somehow, for Captain Early and herself, this was it, the strange effervescence of the impending twentieth century, of bright light beginning in one place and instantly being in another place in a way that you did not sense with a candle or even a star.

  As she felt this, they walked on. He was careful to anchor her hand on the sleeve of his jacket, and to pat it from time to time. But, as she told Lavinia that evening when Lavinia pressed her, he actually said nothing that was, as Lavinia put it, “to the point.” Lavinia made her disappointment clear, but then she said, “Since there’s always something to be made the best of, we will make the best of it.”

  In October, he returned again, but he did not make a proposal. As it turned out, he was finished in Washington, D.C. Lavinia said, impatiently, “If a woman’s task is not to be patient, then I cannot for the life of me understand what her task is!” Margaret was patient. Mrs. Early stayed away. Christmas passed. Captain Early was understood to be in Flagstaff. Then he was understood to have gone to California. Spring came. Elizabeth had another baby, another girl. Captain Early returned from California. Shortly after he returned, he found her picking strawberries in Beatrice’s strawberry patch, and got her to stand up, there in the morning sunshine, and, holding both of her hands, he asked her to marry him. She was twenty-seven. He was thirty-eight. The seriousness of his face as he asked her made her terribly nervous, but she made up her mind that this nervousness was love, a form of electricity.

  Now Lavinia herself became very patient. There was a lot to do in the month before the wedding, especially since Margaret’s linen chest was nothing like what Beatrice’s had been, or Elizabeth’s. What was there in it—three tablecloths, a dozen napkins, some unhemmed sheets and pillowcases, a quilt, neatly made, but old now, ten years old or older? And what dress did she have to be married in? Lavinia had overlooked that, and Margaret had overlooked it, too. Mrs. Bell had nothing suitable—Margaret was much too tall. It was Mrs. Early who took Margaret on the train to St. Louis, to Stix, Baer & Fuller and bought her a practical outfit, a blue shirtwaist with lovely lace over the shoulders and a flattering, bias-cut skirt, in a crisp wool, light but warm, and a coat to go with it, darker blue. They had tea at a French tearoom, and Mrs. Bell joined them. She had a hatbox with her, and she gave it to Margaret, and congratulated her, and gripped her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks in that St. Louis way, but all of her conversation was about Lucy May and Eloise (named after Mrs. Bell), who was already smiling at two months old. After that outing, it was but two weeks until the wedding.

  Andrew came over every afternoon. They were having a heat spell, so he would seat himself in the rocker on the porch. Margaret meant to sit and chat with him, but there were other things to be done—Lavinia would have her shelling peas for supper, or hemming, or even pruning the rosebushes in the bed by the steps. Andrew spoke in a pleasant way about what he had read in the papers that day, or what he had seen walking along the river, or the habits of bees versus the habits of wasps, or changing climate patterns in Equatorial Africa. He had a sonorous voice and a formal delivery. Lavinia never left them alone for very long, but Andrew didn’t seem to mind. Every day, upon leaving, he stood beside her for a second and took her hand in both of his.

  The wedding was quickly accomplished, in the parlor at the farm. Beatrice jiggled the baby, who was fussy with colic, and as Mr. Pine, the minister, asked Andrew if he took this woman, she passed her to Lavinia. The boys could hardly stay still—Robert had to grip them each by one shoulder and force them to stand. Only little Lucy May, now two, was smiling and excited in her smocked dress. She stood quietly holding Elizabeth’s hand until Elizabeth whispered to her, and she walked solemnly over to Margaret and handed her the bouquet of lilacs. Mrs. Hitchens and Mrs. Early kept smiling through it all, and then, afterward, Mrs. Early said, “Active boys become adventurous young men, don’t they, Andrew?” For breakfast, Alice served flapjacks, bacon, and her own blackberry-jam cake, frosted with seven-minute frosting. Margaret and Andrew caught the Katy, which was to connect to the Missouri Pacific at Jefferson City that very evening.

  1905

  PART TWO

  1905

  LAVINIA TOLD MARGARET when she left Missouri, “You’ve always been a good girl, and now you’ve had a piece of luck, marrying at twenty-seven, but a wife only has to do as she’s told for the first year.” Since one of the things she was told to do was to have marital relations, when she and Andrew embarked upon the sleeper that carried them across the sere and enormous Western lands to California, she expected, as Beatrice had warned her, that marital relations would commence at once, but they did not—Andrew was too tall for the sleeper and too modest. He felt they should have separate berths. However, he gave her a chaste kiss every morning upon rising and every evening just before he retired.

  Their progress from Missouri was, at first, a lesson in the effects of decreasing rainfall—the green fields paled from moist, rippling shoots of wheat, to grass, to straw, to brown earth, then abruptly thrust up in cliffs of granite against a hard blue sky like none she had ever seen before. What rain there was Andrew pointed out to her—a vaporous curtain in the deep distance that often didn’t reach all the way from the cloud to the earth. The endless deserts of Nevada were succeeded by their opposite, the pine-clad Sierras by way of the Donner Pass, which were just as daunting. Andrew, in his sonorous way, spent the journey detailing the geology of every region, and then the various stages by which the Donner Party came to grief and later was rescued. Margaret had never heard of the Donner Party, but by the time they got to Sacramento, she knew more about them (“Almost all of the women survived. What do you make of that, my dear?”) than she cared to. From Sacramento to Fairfield, while they sat in the dining car and shared a plate of chicken and potatoes, she thought unwillingly of the Donner Party and stared out at the darkness. California seemed forbidding and self-contained, just as Mr. Dana had described it. At Vallejo, it took them almost two hours to sort their baggage and then make their way, by wagon, from the station through the town and down to the bay, then by ferry across to the island. In the fog, she saw only dim shapes and sudden lights reflected back to her. When they got to their little house, brought in their baggage, and sat down for a rest, it turned out that Andrew had not yet purchased a bed large enough for both of them—it was as if, until he saw both of them in the room, the need for such a bed had not occurred to him. Thinking of Beatrice’s warnings and advice, Margaret was relieved; thinking of Elizabeth’s more reticent but entirely positive reports, she was disappointed.

  It was only gradually that she came to realize that she was truly in California. First, there were the facts—Mare Island was the naval shipyard for the West Coast, an island and an entire world, self-contained and busy and dedicated to everything naval. Andrew was in charge of the small observatory on the base, where he maintained the chronometer. Every day, just before noon, a couple of sailors raised the time ball to the top of the mast on building 51, which was visible from all around the harbor. At precisely noon, upon orders from Andrew, the time ball was dropped, and officers in ships all around the harbor adjusted their clocks, which they called “chronometers.” The shipbuilding factories ran in a long noisy row south along the harbor to the drydocks, where the parts of the ships built in the factories were, by means of huge cranes, joined together (or, in the case of decommissioned or salvaged ships, taken apart) and, eventually, floated (or not). Day and night, men were busy in these factories, which were breathlessly, ear-shatteringly noisy, but all aro
und the noise, people bustled back and forth, laughing and giving orders and chatting about this and that.

  West of the factories, their street of houses looked rather like any other street of houses, and their little house, Quarters P, was pleasant. She had seen similar houses back in Missouri, a single story with a front parlor and a bay window, a dining room, back kitchen, and two bedrooms. The house to their north was yet smaller, but the house to their south (across a little side street) was the first in a row of houses that were as grand as any she had ever seen in St. Louis. There were four of them, and then another, even grander one, with fat columns and a deep awning, where the Commandant of the Base lived; after that, five more of the first type. Past those, at the end of the street, was a small brick chapel, nondenominational. West of this row of houses, but out of sight, were the barracks for the seamen. Not far away, there was a powder magazine. Margaret had never imagined such a busy place, so simultaneously insulated and cosmopolitan, where everyone spoke of “Tangiers” and “Buenos Aires” and “Lisbon” with less self-consciousness than people in Missouri spoke of St. Louis and Chicago.

  Andrew’s observatory, on Dublin Hill, had a five-inch telescope and a retractable roof. He took her there on their second night, once they had recovered from their train journey. It was a small brick building, chilly and crowded with books and papers, but the instruments he used to make his measurements (which he later explained to her, but not that night) were set out neatly. She didn’t touch them, though she looked through the telescope and saw a few things she had never seen before—Mars, the craters of the moon, the rings of Saturn (which, he said, had been at their optimum visibility in 1901, and would be again in 1927), and Neptune, which, Andrew pointed out, was blue. He said, “My view is that Le Verrier discovered it, but Adams gets joint credit.” He put his arm around her shoulders and spoke triumphantly: “They knew it was there! They expected to find it and they did! Bouvard and Adams did the calculations that showed it was there because it deformed the orbit of Uranus. That, to my mind, was the beginning of the modern world. Isn’t it amusing? Six years after the Battle of Waterloo, and already they had begun.” Then he kissed her on the cheek. Very late, they walked back to their house. Margaret was as impressed by the fragrance in the moist air—Andrew said it was from the alyssum—as she was by the solar system.

  Since the only book she had read about California was Mr. Dana’s, she had imagined it as a forbidding place—hard to get to by land or sea, protected by mountains, deserts, offshore winds, and an impenetrable coastline, but this California, the California pierced and conquered by the Southern Pacific Railroad, seemed to embrace her. The grass around her little house was green, and there were roses on the bushes. The breeze off the bay was sometimes damp and foggy and sometimes warm, but it was always redolent of the sea grasses that grew on the western side of the island. The sun shone, and as a result of this sunshine, of the observatory, of the factories, of the flowers, of the unending activity of all kinds—as a result of the constant, pressing presence of Andrew in their small house—she did not feel herself to be the same person that she had always been.

  One of the first things that happened after she arrived was that the back of the powder magazine blew out in an explosion. They heard it, and saw the fire. By the time she and Andrew got outside, the boys next door, the Lear boys, were already walking around on the roof of their house. “It isn’t like this all the time, by any manner of means,” called out Mrs. Lear with a smile. She let the four boys walk around on the roof of the house all that day and did not make them go to school. The boys’ names were Theodore, Martin, Hubert, and Dorsett. Mrs. Lear’s name was Winnifred. Captain Lear commanded the Leader and would be at sea until Christmas.

  The bed was delivered, and she and Andrew explored the fringes of marital relations. According to Beatrice, a woman was lucky not to conceive a child on her wedding night; with Andrew, this good fortune was not a matter of luck. Even so, they proceeded in what Margaret thought was a stately and warmly clothed manner to full marital relations. Since neither of her sisters had described with any exactitude what marital relations were, she found them unexpected, rather like the blue color of Neptune. But for Andrew, the lure of the observatory was strong. Their walks about the island and her visits to the observatory were what seemed to make him happiest and most affectionate. Any new variety of bird or detected movement of a star caused him to squeeze her hand, or even kiss her on the top of the head and tell her about all the other birds and stars he had seen over the years and around the world.

  Margaret had no idea who she was anymore, since she was no longer an old maid in a small Missouri town where bitter cold was succeeded by dogwood, then lilacs, then breathless heat, then the bronze trees and gray skies of autumn, and at last snow again, so she kept her eye on Mrs. Lear.

  Mrs. Lear was naval to the core. Her father was a retired admiral living in New York, also on an island (Long Island). He had known Admiral Farragut himself (a very famous man whom Margaret had never heard of) and had been present when Farragut shouted to his crew, “Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!” (“Or maybe Papa was belowdecks just at that moment, but he was on the ship!”) Mrs. Lear loved her house, she loved Mare Island, and she was as comfortable with the navy as most people were with their immediate families. When Margaret exclaimed at the row of enormous houses, with their porches and porticoes and assiduously tended gardens, she said, “What do you think the navy is for? It is for cheap labor!” And then she laughed. And it was true. Every time Margaret looked around, it seemed, something was being done for her by a young man—he was washing her windows or cutting her shrubs or mowing her grass or carting away her rubbish.

  Mrs. Lear had lived all over the world and served strange things for tea—no cucumber sandwiches for her; rather, oranges, grapefruit, artichokes, oysters, tortillas, cheese made from goat’s milk and sheep’s milk that she had learned to like in Algiers and bought on her weekly trips by ferry to San Francisco. She would eat the egg of any bird, just to see what it tasted like. She enjoyed a certain sauce that was made of hot peppers, the hotter the better, and she had plants full of tiny, pointed, jewel-like red peppers that she showed Margaret but wouldn’t let her touch. When the boys tumbled down the stairs, she laughed. When they ran in the front door and out the back, she laughed. When they rolled around on the grass, punching and fighting one another, she laughed. When they called out to her from the upper windows of the house, turning the heads of passersby, she laughed. There was nothing too strange or too lively for Mrs. Lear, which led Margaret to believe that a life in the navy was far more stimulating and less serious than life in Missouri.

  Andrew very much liked the Lear boys, and took them up the hill after supper to look through the telescope at the observatory before they smoked their last cigarettes and went to bed. And the Lear boys were unfazed by Andrew. When Hubert or Martin came over, Andrew would instantly call out, “How many inches is four meters?” and then time the child until he worked it out. Or he would come out of his office into the parlor and say, “All right, boy, my wagon is being pulled by my horse at a walk. I’m taking a hundredweight of pears to Napa. Each pear weighs four ounces. Every hundred yards, I throw a pear out of the wagon. It’s fourteen miles to Napa. How many kilograms of pears do I have when I get there? And how many pears?” He would not let the poor child leave the house until he had done this problem.

  He didn’t mind that the Lear boys were allowed to run about, to jump on and off things, to swing on ropes from trees. Or that they walked the railings of the big porch as a matter of course (including up and down the stair railings), improving their balance—a boy with a naval future had to perch like a squirrel and climb like a monkey. They rolled their own firecrackers with newspaper and black powder. They wandered away and came back soaking wet from swimming in the bay, reminding him of swims in the Missouri River with his own brothers. And the Lear boys were never disrespectful. They “ma’am”ed and “
sir”ed everyone as a matter of course, snapping upright and not quite saluting. More than once, Margaret was walking down the street and heard a greeting float out over her head—it was Hubert or Dorsett, balanced on the railing of one of the second-story balconies. As soon as the child saw her, he would shout, “Evening, ma’am!” and nod politely, no matter what he was doing. Andrew considered it ideal that the boys loved explosions of all sorts, which they called “ordnance.” And that Theodore lived for the cranes in the shipyard. Marital relations, Margaret came to understand, were meant to reproduce this happy chaos, a return, for Andrew, to the boyhood he remembered, and for her, perhaps, the resurrection of a childhood she had missed.

  One day, Mrs. Lear said, “You could have knocked me over with a feather this morning. I was in the nursery, looking at plants, and I heard Mr. Burgle speaking German to someone, who spoke right back to him, easy as you please, and who should I see but Captain Early! Ja and nein and auf den Bergschrund and I don’t know what all.”

  “Didn’t you know Captain Early was educated in Germany?”

  “Whatever for, my dear?”

  “For astronomy and physics. At the University of Berlin. I mean, after the University of Missouri.”

  “But why didn’t he go to an American university, like Harvard?”