Early Warning

Everyone piled out of the bus and went into the house. Though it was hot outside, maybe ninety-five degrees, it was cool inside — the window openings were a foot deep. The first thing they did was follow Mrs. Perroni into a large dining room, where they were given a Mexican brunch, including all kinds of food with hot sauce and tortillas that Richie had never eaten before, but also plates of peaches and apricots, melon and cantaloupe, blackberries and raspberries in heavy cream. There was also corn, like they had at home and in Iowa in the summer, but it was roasted in the husk, so that the kernels were brown and sweet; Aunt Lois and Uncle Joe ate three of those apiece. His mom carried Emily around the table, picking up bits of things and offering them to her with the tip of her finger. She did this as if she knew what she was doing, something that surprised Richie. He glanced around, but no one else was staring at her — the least motherly woman in the history of the world, fifty-nine years old and still built like a teen-ager.

After that, Mr. Perroni walked them all over the house, up the uneven stairs and down the uneven hallways, opening doors and peeking into rooms, looking at chandeliers and paintings and displays of dried flowers and a broom made of branches. At the end of the downstairs hall was a painting of Jesus gazing upward, and at the end of the upstairs hall was a painting of the Virgin Mary looking downward. Both, according to Mrs. Perroni, were from Spain, and she had seen ones by the same painter in Oaxaca, which was a city in southern Mexico with a cathedral plated in gold. “Alta California could never afford that!” said Mrs. Perroni.

The Angelina Ranch had started out as Angelina Rancho, a mere sixteen thousand acres given to a Mexican soldier in 1835. A battle in the Mexican-American War had taken place right over there — they could see the site from the window of the master bedroom. Three Americans and two Mexicans killed, but the Americans preserved their horses, and managed to get themselves to Colonel Frémont. That family had lost all their money, so, when Mr. Perroni’s people came over from Switzerland at the end of the nineteenth century, they bought this rancho, with its old house, and another one, which had never had a house, the Rancho Rojas, just across the river, and that was that. It was a hard life at one time — everyone out rustling cattle at the crack of dawn, including Gail herself, who was from Los Angeles and had never seen a live cow before she married into the Perronis, but it didn’t take long to learn if your livelihood depended on it, and in the end it was easier than writing for Hollywood, which was what her father did — had they ever seen Rubies for Rent? Or The Wide River? Well, no one had. They went for a walk.

For a week after they came home, Ivy was annoyed with Richie for being too impressed with “life in the Old West.” She said that she’d half expected there to be a shootout, just for show, and she’d taken four showers to get the dust out of her skin. Anyway, what did it matter? Michael and Loretta were planning to live in New York, just like everyone else, so that Michael could get rich and Loretta could pursue her child-development degree. Everyone had a dramatic history. Ivy’s own grandfather had been rescued, as a child, from a pogrom in Odessa, had passed through Ellis Island when he was eight, had his name translated from “Dov Grodno” to “Dave Gordon.” And hadn’t Richie told her his mother’s great-grandfather kept his crazy wife in a tiny little cellar with a trapdoor in the apple orchard, or something like that? Compared with all of this, servicing rentals was rather uninspiring. Or safe, said Ivy. Let’s just be glad we’re safe.

—

ON THE DAY Claire filed her written petition for dissolution of marriage and paid her fee, she went from the courthouse to the grocery store, where she bought a chicken and some potatoes for supper. Then she drove home in the chilly dusk, thinking of her new place downtown — in fact, she had been a little late to the courthouse because she was walking around the apartment, enjoying how quiet it was, even during the day. When she got back to West Des Moines, she parked on the street — something she had never done before, because all of a sudden even the garage seemed claustrophobic, and she carried her bag up the walk — no snow yet. Her house — the house — looked like a picture, dark, shiny front door, square panes of light to either side, and an arch of light above. She climbed the three steps to the front stoop, wiped her shoes on the mat, and extended her hand toward the doorknob.