by Jane Smiley
Within a week of that letter, Mrs. Early seemed to have visited Andrew in Washington. When she got home, she wrote the following:
Dearest Andrew,
I am both happier and sadder than I expected to be after seeing you. I am sadder because you seem unable to separate your thoughts from the anxieties and resentments that you feel toward your colleagues, but I am happy to see that what I had imagined—that you somehow would have lost track of your surroundings and your own person—has not happened. Is it only a mother who visits her unhappy child and checks that, though there are stacks of papers, they are neat stacks. The furniture is dusted, the clothes are not in disarray, and the shoes in the closet are straight. She breathes a sigh of relief. I fancy that any doctor might also be reassured.
Nevertheless, I am even more convinced that you need a change of scene. If you came here until Christmas, it might be the interval you need. Or you could go somewhere more festive and enjoyable than Missouri. Why not Europe? I fancy the thought of you hiking boldly through the mountainous landscape there, and with each step walking away from what bothers you. It would also be true that you would meet some other people who might appeal to you. Our thoughts about certain persons here in this town may not have come to anything (though the girl and her mother still seem receptive enough), but there are other girls and other mothers. My very least favorite thought is that of you solitary and alone, with no companion and no one to care for you.
It took Margaret a moment to comprehend that it was she herself who was being referred to, and then she found it so startling and yet so absolutely expected that she had to put down the letter for a few minutes. But of course they had discussed her and Lavinia. She and Lavinia had discussed them, too. Weren’t all marriage negotiations, including unspoken ones, just that, negotiations? But the cool tone startled her and added a piece of knowledge to her memory of Mrs. Early that she was not quite ready to assimilate. In the years since her death, Margaret had gotten accustomed to thinking of Andrew’s mother as a paragon, not only someone she seemed to have known better than she actually did, but also someone who had cared for her, Margaret, the woman who, as one of her last acts, had taken Margaret into her embrace, the rarest of rare things.
She picked up the letter and read on, knowing that she should not.
No, the girl is not educated nor evidently intelligent, quiet without being mysterious (though I think there is more to her than meets the eye), but what do you want in a wife at your age? Madame Curie? I do not, frankly, think that you could abide a rival or even a young woman who considered herself your equal and spoke her own ideas back to you with any sort of self-confidence. Possibly the other alternative, in your mind, is a beautiful young lady from a prominent family, but I shudder to think of you attempting that. This girl is a well-made young woman with proper instincts and reasonable connections. Her mother has trained her to take care of household matters. Most important—without even thinking of it, she understands the Missouri way of looking at things and doing things, that very pride that has gotten you into trouble so often (I do think Missourians are a separate species of human being, as you know). At your age, I think it is paramount that you avoid the sorts of divergences, and even, you might say, conflicts that your father and I suffered in our youth together. “Ohio!” as your grandmother often said. “Where is that?” “North of Kentucky.” And then she would exclaim, “North! Hah!” and scowl into her tea. I tell you these things in hopes, my beloved son, of not only influencing your actions, but also of lightening your mood.
Margaret folded up the three letters she had read, and then held the packet in her lap for a few minutes. Sometime later, she heard Andrew and Len outside, coming noisily up the walk. In a moment they were inside. Through the open door, she saw that it was later than she thought. She got up to make supper. She gathered from Andrew and Len’s conversation, overheard from the kitchen, that the speech had not been a success, but as she cooked, she heard them talk themselves out of any sense of mortification or disappointment. By supper, which Len was invited to partake of, they were planning future glories once again. Margaret watched them. Len goaded Andrew simply by agreeing with him and then adding a bit of his own. He never allowed Andrew to denigrate himself or his ideas the least bit. As she watched them, Margaret wondered what Len Scanlan could possibly be seeking—what profit could there be in this for him? He never asked for money, even for a loan, and Andrew wouldn’t have given him one. Did he fancy himself Andrew’s future heir? It was impossible to understand.
Before bed, she read the next letter.
Dear Andrew,
I was very sorry to receive the telegram from your Commander telling me of your removal to the hospital. He seemed to think that your misadventure with the gaslight in your room was exactly that, while, of course, I have different suspicions, with which I will not burden you. Whatever the circumstances of your being overcome, I pray you have been galvanized by the experience into some form of caution in the future. There are mental dangers as well as physical dangers that people of passionate temperaments must take care to avoid. It is in the interests of such avoidance that I have been urging you to connect yourself to a wife. The wages of solitude are that every mood is intensified. Yes, solitary happiness can be almost a form of delirium, but is that good? And, of course, the converse is true also—unhappiness can be almost a form of madness. You say that the tedium of marriage would irritate you beyond enduring, but that is precisely why I think that a certain someone is right for you. At the very least, she is an avid reader, and therefore would spend a good deal of time to herself. But I have pressed her virtues before this, and it is up to you to make your choice. I await some word from you or your doctor. Please do not run out of the hospital too quickly.
Margaret gathered from two subsequent letters that Andrew did stay in the hospital for about five weeks, at which point he came to their town. It was in the spring that he made his offer to her, and so, in the end, Mrs. Early carried her point—she had chosen the local old maid, harmless but useful, to marry and care for her darling son. Margaret sat there thinking of this, certain that Lavinia was in on the plot, and that things had been communicated back and forth between the two women that Lavinia did not communicate to her. Had they seen that she was not immune from that Missouri pride that Mrs. Early recognized in Andrew? Had their only choice been to lure her and trap her? She thought maybe it had been. Lavinia’s view of marriage was never other than practical. Romance, she’d said, was always the first act of a tragedy. Lavinia had sent her around town with dishes and shawls for the solitary and dependent old women to show her what the life of an old maid was—in your earlier days, you were called upon to serve anyone and everyone, and in your later days, you waited patiently until someone thought of serving you.
But Andrew! Not only had he entertained doubts about her, he had tried her out, seen that he could have her, and then doubted and hesitated and suffered before taking her as the least of evils. And whatever anyone, including Andrew, might have said about the gas incident as alluded to in the letter, Margaret was convinced that an intention had been there, but it might not have been intention for actual death, only intention for relief. There was a distinction to be made, wasn’t there? A doctor, her father, who is familiar with guns, knows what he is doing when he turns a gun upon himself, but not everyone who steps in front of a train imagines the enormity of death. Andrew’s imagination might only have gotten as far as the yearned-for relief, not as far as his own nonbeing.
She tied up the letters and put them under her bed, behind some books.
• • •
THE much-anticipated day came about a week later. Margaret packed a hamper with fruit, bread, some sausages she had made, and some beers for Mr. Kimura. The Kimuras had provisions, too, in beautiful lacquered boxes, and Pete was with them. He got out of the car and walked on ahead with her. She told him that Andrew and Len had gone off to San Francisco for the day to look at sites from the 1906
earthquake. Andrew still considered himself an expert on that earthquake.
Three or four mallards floated on the pond; a couple of crows were pecking on the bank. An egret stood solitary at the edge of the water. After they had set out their blankets and the picnic, one of the adult coots came walking down the hill, followed by four of the chicks. Out of the water, the chicks, still gray and fluffy, were huge-looking, because of their feet and legs. She pointed them out to Pete and Mr. Kimura, and they watched them, while she and Naoko and Mrs. Kimura chatted among themselves. Not long after this, the other parent appeared, with the other three chicks in tow, and all of the chicks now swam busily all over the pond, into the rushes and out again, sometimes still getting a bite to eat from Mama or Papa, other times straying off. Mr. Kimura squatted on the hillside, watching, occasionally removing his straw hat and putting it right back on. She offered him her glasses, but he shook his head. When the rest of them gathered about the blanket for their picnic, he joined them for a bit, but then went back to the hillside. Naoko and her mother gossiped with Pete. They related a recent birth of twins, two girls, that Mrs. Kimura had overseen. She suspected that the two girls had two different fathers. Yes, she said, it was rare but possible. One of the twins was distinctly American-looking, and Mrs. Kimura was waiting to see if the Chinese husband would cause a scandal. Pete told them about a horse he was training, who could not be made to gallop past a certain spot on the track where the grandstand cast a dark shadow across the homestretch. “This morning, he stopped dead and reared up. The lad slid right down over his haunches, and it took ten minutes to catch him.” Margaret described Len and his project. Pete said, “Fellow’s after something.”
“But what could that be?” exclaimed Margaret. “What does Andrew have that anyone wants?”
“Money,” said Pete.
“If that’s his game,” said Margaret, “then he doesn’t know Andrew.”
Pete lifted an eyebrow.
All around them, the summer grasses waved in the breeze—golden but not yet dried out. A few retiring blossoms nestled in the grasses. The ground was dry. Mrs. Kimura said, “Have this bird in Japan. I think is called ‘oo-ban.’ But I never see picture of it.”
One of the adults walked up on the bank, followed by three of the chicks. Suddenly the adult turned and pecked the third chick hard on the top of the head, and then picked it up by the back of the neck and shook it and dropped it. The chick flopped about in confusion, and the adult and the other two chicks headed out into the water to swim. The chick who had been attacked staggered about a bit, as if stunned, then shook its head a couple of times and fluttered its wings.
“That looked like exasperation,” said Pete.
Margaret said, “It’s been a long couple of months.”
Pete laughed.
“You don’t expect animals to be exasperated,” said Naoko.
“I do,” said Mrs. Kimura.
They took a walk around the pond, and Pete pointed out what he thought was the nest, a boatlike structure made of grasses, about a foot long and not quite so wide. Mr. Kimura pointed out small lizards and mice, a feral orange cat, a heron on the branch of a tree. Everything they did was simple, moment by moment. A breeze came up that was fragrant, though cool. The blanket had to be secured with stones. She had forgotten forks. But there was something about this picnic, some fleeting, perfect comfortableness, that impressed Margaret with the notion that it might be the high point of her life. In the instant she thought this, it didn’t seem such a bad thought.
Three days later, Naoko came to the island bearing a small scroll painting, about fourteen inches wide and twelve inches tall. The expanse of the pond stretched across the paper, greenish gold, and the golden hill rose above it. On the surface of the pond, the adult coots were swimming. The larger of them turned toward the viewer, her eye bright and her white beak in the act of grabbing something off the water. Two chicks accompanied her. The other adult was closer to the bank; two chicks were on the bank. To the left, all the way across the water, another chick was larking about, swimming fast enough to make ripples. Perched on a tree branch that leaned over the pond was a crow, its beak pointing toward the coot chicks. It was beautiful and economical. The only bits of real color were the red heads of the chicks, a small butterfly, and the red seal that was Mr. Kimura’s signature. She made Naoko take forty dollars.
It was that night that Margaret dreamed of Pete, of Pete and Dora, embracing, framed in light, but not, she realized when she woke, the light of a hallway or gas lamps, or even a doorway, but, rather, some sort of a forest light, dense tree cover giving way to a path. In the dream, she was happy and excited, but she also had the sense that she was not in the dream, except that Dora was wearing one of her dresses, her favorite gray crêpe de chine with a black belt and a black collar. Even so, in the dream, Dora was weeping as she had that night, the night of the bombing, weeping as though she knew what was coming and that she would not survive. Except that she had survived. It was a strange dream.
SHE had the picture framed. Both Andrew and Len noticed it and complimented it. Len said, “Did you paint this yourself, Mrs. Early?”
“No, I—”
“You know, I must say that Captain Early is a dab hand with a pen. His drawings are exquisite.”
“Yes, he—”
“The layman can really get the sense of what he is going for, as far as his ideas. It’s a rare thing in a physicist.”
“An astronomer.”
“Oh, madam, far more than that now. Far more.”
“How is your book coming, then?”
“Well, of course, it has expanded. I knew that would happen when I proposed coming out here, but it has expanded downward and backward. When I think of what I had before, or what I was thinking, it seems literally flat to me. This is much more exciting.”
“What has it been? Almost eight months now?”
“Oh yes. But I have nothing pressing drawing me back to Minnesota, and now, with the fall coming, it’s very hard to leave California, isn’t it? Very hard, indeed. Much bigger when you get here than you thought it was going to be.”
“Isn’t that true of every place?”
“Is it?” It was true that Len had expanded since his arrival, both in size and in self-importance. It was as if he and Andrew were inflating each other.
Andrew said, “This picture looks like California.”
“It is.”
“But in a Japanese style.”
“I commissioned it. From Mr. Kimura, who did the rabbit.” He glanced over at the rabbit. “I paid him forty dollars.” He did not seem pleased. She said, “Pete was there. He said forty dollars was a fair price.”
Andrew sniffed and put his hands in his pockets, but his expression lightened. He said, “Good investment, then?”
“Pete thinks so.”
He stared at the picture for another moment, said, “Well, then,” in a conciliatory way, and went back to his study. Pete’s name worked like magic with Andrew. Len was a mere acolyte; Pete, an equal.
Then there were only five chicks. She counted them several times and walked about the pond, looking for the other two. She was surprised at how distressed she felt. That night, she even awakened thinking about it. But the next morning, all seven chicks were there, swimming and eating. She was reassured.
The next morning, she opened the door to Len and told him Andrew had already gone up to the observatory, but Len followed her into the kitchen and said, “Mrs. Early, I’ve noticed what a generous person you are.”
“Thank you, Len.”
“And you seem to be able to keep your own counsel.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She waited.
Len was looking at his shoes. “I wonder if you might help me with a little matter.”
“Captain Early—”
“I suspect this matter would be disturbing to Captain Early, given his straitlaced views.”
&nb
sp; She wiped her hands with the dish towel and hung it up.
“My landlady says that she is going to sue me for breach of promise.”
“Breach of promise! Did you make a promise?”
“Only in the sense that I was lonely and found her daughter a sympathetic listener. She is very interested in astronomy and physics, and everything about the universe. We talked only about that.”
“Truly?”
“She’s a—she’s a—she’s a plain girl. And possibly no man has heretofore talked to her about anything at all. One night, we talked until very late, and I, ahem, I kissed her. Could you come with me to the house and talk to her? She would respect you. Perhaps my side could get explained.”
“What is your side?”
“Well, Mrs. Early, my side is that I’m already married.”
She eyed him, the perfect example of the fact that almost any man could procure himself a wife, no matter how unprepossessing he happened to be. Len could have procured himself two had he been more daring. “You came here eight months ago. What is your wife doing?”
“She lives with her mother. I hadn’t meant to stay so long—only for the winter. But Captain Early is very involving. Every time I say I’m finished with gathering material, he has a few more things that he simply must communicate. When I’m in his—orbit—I feel the—uh—gravitation of my other responsibilities fading.”
“Didn’t you tell me that you were unmarried? I mean, when you first got here.”
“I don’t believe I said anything about it. Our marriage has been … difficult.” He looked her in the face. “Many are.” Then he lowered his gaze and said, “I believe the separation has clarified …” His voice trailed off.
They went out to the Franklin. He moved toward the driver’s door, but she stepped in front of him.
