Golden Age Page 10

  Richie had met the governor several times, and, like everyone, found him attractive, but now he felt the man’s words engraving themselves into his brain—words that he would use in his own campaign against Kevin. “This time we cannot afford to fail to deliver the message…The ship is headed toward the rocks!” And then he made a joke about the invisible hand of the market that everyone cheered, and Richie learned from him the whole time. “Prayer is always a good idea!” Only Richie laughed at that, since he had never prayed in his life. Richie had to admire the man’s flurry of great lines—“Bush said, ‘We have the will, but not the wallet!’ ” and he followed that with a reminder of the savings-and-loan bailout—“All of a sudden, the heavens opened and out of the blue, billions of dollars appeared, not for children, not for jobs, not for drug treatment or the ill or for health care, but hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out failed savings and loans.” Richie stopped gaping and glanced around. The cameras were on Cuomo, not him, but he did not want to look stupid, though in fact he felt stupid: he had agreed to run for Congress, and just now he realized that he was not prepared, in spite of all of his years of working for the congressman and watching him decide this and decide that, vote on this, vote on that, give this quote and that quote. He felt a trembling in the back of his neck, because he was not a deep thinker, an A student, a well-trained military man, or even a lawyer. He was in the right place at the right time with the right look and the right vocal timbre and the right connections. The congressman had often said, over the years, that Richie had a “knack for this stuff,” and maybe he did, because more often than not he could talk someone into something, but just at this moment, when he was watching the governor roll to a climax, he felt like he knew less and less, right down to nothing. The governor finished his speech to rousing applause; Richie yelled, clapped, whistled. A young woman from the office grabbed his hand, and the congressman gave him the thumbs-up. He was being taken upon the flood into the Congress, too young, too green, too stupid, but of course he would not stop it.

  —

  JANET KNEW, rationally, that if she’d had Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems when Emily was a baby, Emily would be a different person, but even so, and even though she’d read the book three times and nearly memorized it, putting the method into practice scared her. It seemed like a test, but not, say, a math test—rather, a driving test, dangerous and demanding. But Jared, who was hard to annoy, was almost annoyed because Jonah, nine months old, was still waking up to nurse at 2:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m., and lately he was brighter—more interested in people and toys, and crawling all over the place—so it was harder to put him down at night. The whole time he was nursing before bed, his eyes would roll toward whatever sound he heard, whatever else might be happening. He was a curious boy, active. Jared said getting him to sleep through the night was now or never, and Janet didn’t disagree with him. But.

  The moment she knew they were committed was when, after she nursed him on the couch (instead of his bedroom), she sat him up and kissed him a few times (instead of easing him, sleeping, into his crib), then took him over to Jared, who was watching TV, and to Emily, who was reading The Chronicle of the Horse, for a good-night kiss. They were kind and supportive, as if Jonah were heading out into the wilderness with a secret message that he had to deliver to rebel forces all by himself. Then she carried him upstairs and into his room, laid him down, kissed him good night, covered him, and walked out without thinking about whether he might grab the top railing of the crib and launch himself, or whether she should have solved his sleep problems months ago.

  The crying started after about a minute, first whimpers of disbelief, then shouts and wails. At three minutes, she went in, gave him a kiss, noted that he was still lying down, and walked out. After another five minutes, she did this again. The technique prescribed that she should then wait ten minutes, but she could only manage eight. She went in. Jonah stared up at her, his mouth open in horror, the whimpers ululating into shouts. He held out his arms. Janet spoke much more firmly and cheerily than she felt. “Good night, sweetie! Time to go to sleep.” She patted his forehead, let her hand linger there; he was a beautiful child, with large, bright eyes, thick hair, and full lips. Then she turned and walked out, closing the door. Three minutes after that, the crying stopped abruptly, and she tiptoed down the stairs, exhausted. Jared’s show was still on, Emily was still reading The Chronicle. Twenty minutes seemed like two hours.

  He did wake up around two—two-thirteen. She went into his room and did what she was supposed to do. Then, outside his door, she was so tired that she slumped against the wall. Three minutes, five minutes. Two minutes after her second, supposedly reassuring visit, he went quiet, and she did not peek in to see whether he had put his head between the bars of his crib (not possible—the bars were two and a half inches apart). She went back to bed, lay awake for a while, noticed that Jared had not moved, and did, indeed, fall asleep. Jonah was up at his usual time, just after six. She entered his room with a feeling of such profound guilt that she felt thrilled, but also astonished, when he greeted her with his usual big smile and waving arms, and when she picked him up his arms went around her neck. Jared and Emily said nothing about the whole ordeal at breakfast. Jared said he would be late for supper, and Emily reminded her that she had promised to take her to the stables that afternoon—she had to ride both Pesky and Sunlight, especially if Janet planned to go out Saturday, like she’d said. Yes, she did. “Well, then,” said Emily, in a Denise Herman sort of voice, “are you going to come over and clean your tack? You haven’t cleaned it in two weeks, and it’s a little yucky,” which made Janet get up, go into the bathroom off the kitchen, and laugh silently into the mirror. When she came back out, Emily was setting some bits of scrambled egg on the tray of Jonah’s highchair, and he was touching them with the tip of his finger. Jared was saying, “Honey, give him a bit of the watermelon.”

  That night, Night Number Two, it took him twenty-four despair-filled minutes to fall asleep, but when he woke up at two-thirty-four, he only cried out once; she stood outside his door for five minutes, and he didn’t make another sound. On Night Number Three, he fell asleep in fourteen minutes; on Night Number Four, in five; and on Night Number Five, he took a deep breath when she kissed him and patted him, and was, as far as she could tell, sleeping by the time she left the room. And he didn’t wake up until seven-thirty.

  The only semi-sad aspect was that she had no one to impart this newfound wisdom to—none of her friends had babies, she didn’t know any younger women well enough to give them unsolicited advice, and Jared and Emily thought that it was all a matter of course. So she kept it quiet, another pleasurable secret between herself and Jonah, another reason never to get a babysitter and to put off the nanny question for six months. She didn’t actually want to be away from him, so why bother?

  —

  RICHIE HAD the lease on his little campaign office on Sixth Avenue near Ninth Street until the end of the year, which gave him plenty of time to get it cleaned up. The best thing about it (it was only fourteen feet wide and thirty feet deep, and so had been cheap) was that it was across the street from Colson’s, where he always went for coffee. It was there that Charlie and the girlfriend ambushed him at 9:00 a.m. the day after the election. They let him get his coffee and pay for it, along with a rugelach and an apricot tart, so that his hands were full and his cup was hot, and he couldn’t get away. And they stood between him and the door, too. Richie was tired of the campaign and ready for a break, but he said, “Okay, let’s sit down,” and Charlie pulled out the seat they had been keeping for him. Richie wondered if they’d followed him from Park Slope.

  Richie had won, 53.4 percent to 46.1 percent, leaving out the handful who’d voted for the socialists and the three voters who voted for the Conservative Party. It was a margin that would have deeply shamed Congressman Scheuer. Richie himself didn’t know if this was a good omen or a bad one, a sign of the times or something personal. He
told himself that he was in, all that mattered.

  Riley was talking. Charlie was smiling. Richie was putting on his paying-attention face. Riley said, “Sir, as far as I am concerned, and the people I work with, this is the most important issue of our age. I’m not kidding.”

  “She’s not kidding,” said Charlie.

  Richie said, “Explain it to me again, in a way that I can understand.”

  She was good. She did not take a single impatient breath; she did not, even fleetingly, get a “you idiot” look on her face. She did what he would have done with an angry Perot supporter—she smiled and said, “Okay, Clinton was elected, just barely, and now is really our only chance. I mean, let’s put it this way—”

  Charlie interrupted, “Pornographers have control of the White House now, and militant homosexuals run the armed forces.”

  Richie actually glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them. Loretta had said almost that very thing a week or so ago, except that she, of course, meant it.

  “And,” said Riley, “we can close the ozone hole because that was an atheist plot, and now we’ve won.” She had a big smile. That was her pretty part. She got serious immediately, and leaned toward him. “But the greenhouse effect is harder to deal with. We atheists and our trained-seal scientists can’t do it alone, and God doesn’t seem to care, so I want a job.”

  “What would your job be?” said Richie.

  “Congressmen have staff,” said Charlie. “People who get on TV and say, ‘The congressman has no comment at this time.’ ”

  “I do need someone like that. What’s your name? Riley? Let’s hear you.”

  Riley cleared her throat, then said, “The congressman has no comment at this time about whether six prostitutes did, indeed, jump from the third-story windows of the West Wing, but he would like to point out that all of the prostitutes signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change while they were visiting with the president, and are completely in agreement with the aims of the protocol, namely, to commit themselves to a reduction of carbon dioxide, methane, sulfur hexafluoride, and, their own personal favorite, nitrous oxide, or laughing gas.” Her smile was perfectly flat and fake, just the way the networks liked it. She went on: “And, of course, hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons. We understand that, before the jump, three of the prostitutes were preparing a statement to this effect. We greatly regret what appears to be a heartbreaking tragedy, and we would like to remind the audience that everyone must pull together to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by our agreed-upon five-point-two percent. Thank you, and, once again, the congressman regrets being called away on pressing business just now. I have no further comment.” Her smile broadened.

  Richie said, “Perfect.”

  Charlie said, “I’ve been coaching her.”

  Riley said, “I can also answer hate mail, death threats, and accusations that you bear the mark of the devil on your forehead, which is why you always wear a baseball cap.”

  “Do you have practice answering those sorts of letters?”

  “We don’t answer them, but I think they should be answered.”

  Charlie offered, helpfully, “She still has to write her dissertation, but she’s finished with her coursework.”

  “What is the subject of your dissertation?”

  “Methods of motivating governing elites to understand and address climate issues.”

  “So—I am your experimental subject?”

  “You’re the only one either of us has met.”

  Charlie said, “We drove through Iowa during the drought four years ago, but I was too shy to stop and see Joe or even Minnie. I really liked Minnie.”

  Riley turned glum, then said, “I am so sorry I missed that. But I did two papers on the Yellowstone fires.”

  “How old are you?” said Richie.

  “Twenty-six,” said Riley.

  “Do you want to be part of an experiment?”

  “Sure,” said Riley.

  “My sister-in-law would be one of those people writing you hate mail. You should meet her and try out your techniques on her.”

  “Michael’s wife,” said Charlie.

  Richie nodded.

  Charlie said, “I got that vibe off her. The my-dad-has-twenty-thousand-head-of-cattle-and-we-eat-ribs-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner-and-you-will-remove-them-from-my-cold-dead-hands sort of vibe.”

  Richie looked at the clock behind the baked-goods display. It was almost eleven, and he had done nothing yet this morning. Ivy was not sanguine about the presidential election. She thought the victory was enough to shrink the population of right-wing bacteria, but not enough to kill them all, so the stronger ones would reproduce and return, more “virulent” than ever (though she did think that eventually she would win over Michael, who was basically well meaning, and Loretta, who had to be more sharply defined than Michael just to maintain his interest and respect). Richie said, “What are you doing this morning, Riley?”

  “Following you around.”

  Richie said, “I will pay you each one dollar over the minimum wage, which is four twenty-five per hour, to help me clean up my campaign headquarters, starting right now; one hour every day for lunch; no benefits until I get to Washington. But you can come for dinner Friday night and meet Ivy and Leo.”

  “Five fifty,” said Charlie.

  Richie pulled some change out of his pocket and threw it on the table, then said, “You got it.”

  1993

  ANDY AND DEBBIE ARRANGED that Frank would invite Arthur to Englewood Cliffs after the inauguration. He would come for a week and at least be a little distracted. No one north of the Tappan Zee Bridge had seen the sun in twenty-six days; Debbie could tell Arthur was sinking. Debbie’s husband, Hugh, was sinking, too. Hugh tried not to complain, but he thought, if the four of them could just get away to Stowe for a long weekend (away from Arthur, that was), then everyone would be fortified and ready to take on the ninth anniversary of Lillian’s death. Hugh’s unspoken opinion was that people die—his grandmother had died; his aunt had died; his grandfather had died. In his family, this was accepted as natural. He had spent nine years treating Lillian’s death as a larger event than he felt it was. Andy said, “I understand completely.”

  Because Arthur might not answer the phone, and even if he did he would decline the invitation, Frank proposed that they drive up to Hamilton (Hugh was tenured at Colgate now) and kidnap him. They would take the kid, Charlie, with them. Andy asked Richie, who asked Riley, who asked Charlie, who said yes. Riley was in Washington, helping Richie organize his congressional office. But Arthur was happy to see them and not at all reluctant to accompany them to New Jersey.

  He kept up conversation for maybe half an hour, then dozed off with his head against the car window, snoring for a while; then he seemed to suck air and gag, which was alarming. And even though the Mercedes was hot, Arthur shivered periodically as Frank drove.

  Once they got back to Englewood Cliffs and Arthur had gone to bed, Andy, Frank, and Charlie huddled around the table in the kitchen. “He at least needs a warmer coat,” said Charlie. “I can find him something.”

  “He must weigh a hundred and twenty-five pounds,” said Andy. “And he’s so hunched over. I can’t believe he’s our age.” She turned to Charlie. “I’ll be seventy-three in the summer, and Frank turned seventy-three on the first of January, but Arthur looks ninety. His father was still walking several miles a day the last year of his life. Was he eighty-something when he died?” Andy had bought tickets to Jelly’s Last Jam and planned to take Arthur to simple things, like Central Park to watch the skaters at Wollman Rink, brunch at a deli, maybe to the Guggenheim for half an hour; but, judging by the way he had changed even since the fall, she wasn’t so sure now.

  Frank said, “He’s tougher than we think,” and it was true that Arthur had endured things that none of the rest of them had had to endure, but even if Frank was discounting his own good health by 50 percent, Andy thought
he was overestimating what Arthur had become.

  Andy said, “Maybe I should take him to a doctor.”

  But could kidnapping accomplish that, too?

  When they were settling into bed, Frank said, “You know, it’s okay with Arthur if he dies. I don’t think he ever tried it after that one time, but he told me he thought about it. And thought about it.”

  Andy said, “You have to be brave and resolute to do it.”

  Frank tightened his arms around her and kissed her.

  In the morning, Arthur was already up when Andy entered the kitchen. Charlie had toasted him an English muffin and made both of them some hard-boiled eggs and coffee. Arthur was sitting up straight and cracking the shell of his egg. Charlie was saying, “You can get used to your indoor temperature being sixty-two if you’ve weather-stripped the windows to take care of the drafts. Warm socks and a sweater work for me. We’re lucky to have heat at all—we have friends who’ve never turned on the furnace. Even Riley dreads going to their place.”

  Arthur gazed at him with a fond smile and said, “Some indigenous peoples are built to retain heat. Thick around the center, thin at the periphery. But you don’t look like one of them.”

  “I have the luxury of a six-thousand-calorie diet.”

  Andy wrapped her robe a little more tightly around herself and said, “Everybody sleep well?”

  Charlie said, “I did get up to open a couple of windows, but I set a rolled-up towel against the threshold of the door so no cold air would leak into the house.”

  “Comfortable bed,” said Arthur.

  Andy offered them some Familia, which she liked with a little yogurt every morning, but they shook their heads.