by Jane Smiley
It did seem as though no one at all spoke to her all morning, and then, when her geography test came back, she saw that she had missed almost every state capital—eight right and forty wrong—not merely an F. When she looked more closely, she saw that she had misread the pattern of the answers, and filled in the wrong circles—if she had been paying attention, she would have gotten three wrong and forty-five right (and who knew anything about Olympia, Salem, and Carson City, anyway?). She had even gotten the capital of Iowa wrong—she had marked it as Topeka. The paper had “See me” written along the top. For lunch, there was liver. She hated liver, and it didn’t help that everyone seemed to hate liver, and two of the boys in her class started throwing all the liver on the floor of the cafeteria, until some teachers ran over and gave everyone detention.
After lunch, she was so hungry that she fainted in English class and fell out of her desk chair, and so she ended up being walked to the nurse’s office by Mary Ann Hunsaker, who held her elbow in a tight grip “in case you fall down.” The nurse took her temperature, which was normal, and felt her head, and told her that if she felt sick again she should put her head between her knees, which Lillian could not imagine doing in front of the other kids. And still Jane did not look at her or talk to her in their last class of the day, which was Latin, irregular verbs. When she got on the hack to go home, she saw Jane and Betty across the lawn in front of the high school. They were right next to one another, their heads bowed, and they were laughing. The hack was cold, too—they drove straight into a bitter wind all the way home.
Mama was not happy when she got home. Claire had been fussy all day, and Joey, who had been moving the last of the oat hay around in the hayloft, had fallen through the trapdoor and twisted his ankle (“Or worse than that!” said Mama). He was sitting in the front room with his leg propped on a pillow, and every time Mama walked through the room, she said, “Well, we just pray to the Lord that it isn’t broken. My land! It’s always something on a farm! What in the world do city people do with their time, is what I want to know!”
It was the worst day of her life not because anything terrible happened, like Uncle Rolf hanging himself, but because her whole life seemed to be falling apart in her hands, and she didn’t know what in the world was left. She could not imagine what she could do to reconstruct all the things she enjoyed, and she could hardly remember what it was that she had enjoyed. It was only a year since she and Minnie had gotten the other children to use the end of winter to sew and read. That cozy time was turning into her favorite memory. But she could only remember that it was good, not how it felt.
ELOISE ALWAYS WONDERED if Julius and she would have been so surprised at the German invasion of Russia if they had been living somewhere east of Chicago. Sometimes, the entire atmosphere between London and Chicago occurred in her mind like a huge layer of cotton wool, muffling every single communication from the east, and sometimes it occurred like an echo chamber—whatever was being said, you did not know who was saying it or where it was coming from. At one point, Julius suggested that they keep their eye on the Canadians—whatever the Party decided to do up there, they would do that, too. After Trotsky was killed, Julius declared that that was it, he’d had enough, he would never, never raise a finger to help Stalin, the revolution had veered so far off the tracks that world communism was unsavable. For four weeks, they stayed home from meetings, had no contact with any friends. The ones in the Party were not to be trusted, and the two or three like them, who sympathized with Trotsky, were dangerous to associate with—who knew what revenge Stalin was plotting, even in Chicago? But what were you supposed to do with yourself when you saw no one? So they crept back, one friend at a time. But they never, never mentioned Stalin or Russia or the Soviet Union’s alliance with the Nazis.
And then it was an alliance no more, and, speaking of Canada, Julius, now thirty-five (he was a year younger than Eloise), went off to Canada to join the war effort; that was what Englishmen living in the United States had to do, especially after the Smith Act, which might have deported him, anyway. A week after he left, which was three days after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi forces, she took Rosa to the train, bought them a last-minute ticket, and headed west. All the way to Usherton, she contemplated keeping going—she had enough money for the fare to Denver, or even to San Francisco, and Ina Finch, who had been her friend in the Party, had moved to San Francisco and would be happy to put her up, she was sure. But she got off at Usherton just as if she hadn’t the imagination to go farther, and there she was. She called her mother from the station, and her father came by half an hour later and picked them up. She had told them nothing about Julius’s departure. The war was close. The war was very close.
Eloise and Rosanna had joked over the years that maybe John would never get married—he could listen to their father shouting without turning a hair, but every time their mother sighed, he went pale. However, he was married now, not quite thirty and the girl was a plump thing whose eyes closed every time Granny Mary told her to do anything that she didn’t want to do. Over supper, she scraped every bit of food out of every serving dish, onto her plate, and complimented Granny Mary on all the food, as if she hadn’t had a thing to eat in weeks. She was so talkative that Eloise saw that everyone else got quieter and quieter as the meal progressed. Rosa, who had been excited to get back to the farm, didn’t say a word.
In the parlor, her father took a nap (he had been cultivating the cornfields since breakfast) and her mother continued with her needlepoint, which was a picture of three trees in a rolling field, with Canada geese flying off to the left. Her mother said, “Well, poor Julius, what a choice to have to make.” She glanced toward the door in case Rosa should appear.
“Who’s going to avoid that choice, Mama?” said Eloise. “You know we’ll have to go in.”
Her mother tutted, then said, “Lindbergh says we’re better off staying out of the whole thing. It’s not our business.” She glanced at Eloise, then said, “I’m not saying I know what to do.”
Eloise tried to make her voice level. “Lindbergh thinks the Nazis aren’t that bad. He’s wrong.”
“How do you know?”
“What I hear at the paper. What I hear at meetings.”
“Oh, meetings,” said her mother. Eloise felt her hackles rise. But she and Julius often discussed whether you could believe what you heard at meetings. They discussed that after almost every meeting, in fact. Her mother peered into her sewing box and pulled out a skein of magenta thread, then delicately picked off a length and began to separate the strands. She said, “Meine Söhne brauchen nicht um ihr Leben zu opfern für die Engländer. Oder die Russen für diese Angelegenheit.”
“I understand what you said.” The gist of it was that her mother, normally the most amenable of women, would not allow her sons to die for the English or the Russians.
“I hope you do.”
Then Eloise said, “Ja, gut, haben die letzten Worte an dieser Stelle nicht gesagt worden, egal was du sagst.” She thought she sounded pretty good—only about 5 percent rusty. No, she didn’t think what her brothers did would be her mother’s choice. She thought the days of choosing this or that were pretty much over.
But it was rather amusing to argue, even about such a serious matter, in German. All serious family disagreements were aired in German and always had been, and quite often Eloise and Rosanna and the brothers hadn’t understood much of what their parents and grandparents were saying. This meant that they had improved their German over the years partly to eavesdrop and partly to talk back. More than once, one child or another had surprised Granny Mary and Oma by piping up without being asked. In Chicago, Eloise had asked some of the others in the Party whose parents were first- or second-generation if it was the same in their families, and it almost always was. Only Julius’s family argued in both Yiddish and English, but in Yiddish they argued about family matters, and in English they argued about politics and religion. Safely ensconced in Iowa
, with Julius in Toronto, Eloise could think that this was the source of their conflict—their common language was English, and so he could never let anything drop until she had yielded, which, of course, infuriated her.
That night, she sat up by her old window after putting Rosa to bed. The western horizon was flat, flat, flat, and the merest pale string of light shone above it, like a steel rim. Above that, the gallery of stars was beginning to shape itself, deep and broad and sharp in a way that you never saw in Chicago, even out in the middle of the lake. Behind her, Rosa’s breathing slowed, and now she was asleep. Eloise turned around and looked at her. She was eight. Eloise didn’t believe in Freud—that was bourgeois drivel, really. But she did wonder, just then, if Rosa had ever gained entrance to their family romance. It didn’t have to be Oedipal, did it? You didn’t have to want to kill your mother and marry your father. But probably you did want to attract their attention once in a while.
AS USUAL, Frank hardly went home at all during the summer. Professor Cullhane thought that they had it—or that they almost had it. They had tried out a batch of the gunpowder that they’d processed in June, and it hardly colored the barrels of their rifles at all. Professor Cullhane had grabbed Frank’s hand, shaken it up and down, thanked him from the bottom of his heart for sticking with him another year. The rifles were no longer new, but Frank had cleaned them with perfect care, and the barrels had shown almost no effects. The key was to reproduce that batch. Frank’s job was to track the characteristics of the char—how old were the cornstalks, what variety, etc.—and of the saltpeter—cow manure, and what had been the diet of those cows. At Iowa State, it was actually possible to do these things, and also to consult the soil analysis for the field where the corn had been grown. It was possible, but it was time-consuming. So he hadn’t gone with Hildy to Decorah to meet her parents, nor had he taken her to Usherton. He had said that he loved her, though. Hildy seemed to think that one thing led naturally to another, but Frank did not agree. Still, Hildy had wangled a way of staying in Ames—she had found a job caring for some children. The wife of a professor in the Physics Department had given birth to a little girl; her other children were only two and a half and four. The woman’s hands were full, but she lived in a big house and paid Hildy ten dollars a week, as well as putting her up in a third-floor room. Hildy said, “You’d think she’d have known better,” but she liked her charges well enough. Her day off coincided with Frank’s, and they took the bus to Carr Pool and sat around. Frank liked to swim laps, and sometimes Hildy dived off the high board. She could do both a jackknife and a back flip. All eyes looked up at her. She was a beautiful girl, and maybe he did love her.
He did not remember that Eunice had never sent him Lawrence’s photos until he saw her the first day of the fall quarter, across the dining room in the union. He was finishing a late breakfast, and he looked up. The room was churning with people, and resounding with greetings and news. His eye went to her as if on a chain, and hers turned toward him. But even though they were looking at each other, there was absolute nonrecognition. He might have been staring at the back of her head, and she at the back of his.
THE NEXT TIME he saw her was at a Sigma Nu party. Jack Smith was a Sigma Nu, and he liked to have Frank come to the parties for some reason, maybe just to see what Frank would wear. Frank could not say that he had inherited anything from Lawrence, but he had two jackets that Lawrence had helped him pick out at a secondhand store, three pairs of shoes (he especially enjoyed the spectators), and four ties. His inheritance was knowledge of where to go to get the best styles and the best goods, because Lawrence had loved looking sharp. After Lawrence, Frank even knew how to wear a hat, and the difference between a fedora and a Panama. He had one of each. He didn’t wear those to fraternity parties, though.
She was talking to one of the boys. She looked up at him and then looked back at the boy, but Frank could tell that she had lost her train of thought. He passed through to the next room and then out onto the veranda—the porch, except that it was big and had columns. On the porch, the guys were downing shots. Frank downed a shot and lit his cigarette. She came and stood next to him. It was in fact difficult to say anything if you absolutely refused to make the slightest effort at being cordial or even at having good manners. Thanks to Walter, Rosanna, and Granny Mary, Frank had good manners. Which meant that he had nothing to say. He was surprised that he still felt absolute antipathy toward her, as if no time had passed since Lawrence had collapsed into her lap and she had paused ever so momentarily before laying her hand on his head. Frank dared her to mention Lawrence’s name.
She said, “What does Hildy see in you?”
He flicked the ash of his cigarette into the bushes.
She said, “At least, that was what Lawrence always wondered.”
He inhaled another lungful of smoke, blew it out, and said, “Do you come to these parties to pass out and get fucked?”
Her lips formed the barest smile.
After that, Frank knew even then, it was only a matter of time.
The char, of course, didn’t work out. Nor did the saltpeter. It got too cold for the tent, and Hildy said that friends of her summer employer would rent him a room with its own entrance. The leaves fell off the trees, and the grass burst out with a last flash of green, and the ducks and geese vanished from Lake LaVerne. It rained. He and Hildy saw Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Maltese Falcon and Dumbo. They talked about the draft lottery, but the war seemed distant and abstract. He was affectionate and chaster than she was, which made her love him even more. Other things made her love him, too—he told her, with real remorse, how he had tormented his brother Joe for Joe’s entire life, and now here he was, Joe, making so much money off his crop this year (fifty-six bushels an acre) that he could buy himself a car, a new car—no one in their family had bought a new car in Frank’s lifetime. His one regret was how he’d treated Joe. He told her how kind and beautiful Lillian was, and how Henry sewed his own outfit that time and then wore it into rags, and he laughed when Hildy reproduced little bits of funny business that she saw in movies, and he listened when she described her topics for English essays and biology experiments, and he proofread her essays and gave her suggestions that improved her experiments. She said, “Oh, you seem so happy, Frank. You’ve loosened up. It’s because we’re better friends.” He cried one night in her arms (in his room) about Lawrence.
But it was Eunice that he was thinking of every moment, Eunice that he was seeing—standing in every doorway, sitting at every table, walking ahead of him down every path and street. It was Eunice who said that she would never see him or speak to him again, and who always came back for more. It was Eunice that he told to get out and stay out, Eunice that he looked for and sensed the presence of. He and Hildy had a daily life, with tasks and assignments and weather, days and nights that had names—Thursday, October 16—that measured the passage of time and the growth, or at least the accumulation, of something. Eunice walked around in a blaze that was not a nightmare and not a dream, but was as timeless and separate as that. His feelings for her did not change even as he came to recognize that she was just a girl, just a kid, just someone fixing her hair in the morning and going to class. Whatever she was in that way, to him she was something else entirely—she was the only female he had ever desired. In a way, it was like one of those movies where the man and the woman only say mean things to one another because they’d had bad experiences, and then, in the end, they learn their lesson because one of them is about to die, and you know it’s love. But Frank hadn’t had any bad experiences, and he didn’t care about Eunice’s experiences, bad or good. He most especially did not want to know what she had done with Lawrence, and so he got up and walked away whenever she started going on in her semi-Southern Missoura accent about anything at all. More than once, he walked away from her, and returned to find she’d disappeared. But she always came back—or, rather, she always reappeared in the vicinity—and often enough, he got her in pr
ivate somewhere and got enough of her clothes off to be able to fuck her. He could not have told anyone why his cock went absolutely rigid at the thought of doing her, without any coaxing on his part, but it did. In the course of the autumn, he got to her four times, and he only knew that because he noted it down. If he hadn’t noted it down, he, Mr. Organized, who knew every molecule that had gone into that one terrific batch of gunpowder, would not have known the difference between two and forty.
As far as Frank was concerned, the Pearl Harbor attack did not come soon enough. The week after it happened, he finished his remaining essay, took his exams, and then went down to the enlistment office and signed up. When he went home and told Rosanna, she was fit to be tied that he hadn’t at least waited to graduate. “All that money down the drain!” And why hadn’t he graduated in June? She would never understand Frank. He said nothing at all about what was driving him out of Ames, and Walter commended his patriotism. He did not even drop Hildy a note. He figured Eunice would get to her soon enough, and between them they would put two and two together.
