Early Warning

Lynne said, “I thought we did meet. But, if not, we should.” Everyone knew that Michael had mistresses. Everyone knew that, on the very day Binky was born, the reason Loretta hadn’t been able to get hold of him (and had had to give him the news through Richie) was that Michael was up in the Catskills, looking at old Victorians with one of them. Perhaps it was Lynne.

“Why is that?” said Loretta.

Having made her way through ten or twelve slices, Ivy set down the knife. She said, “It really is delicious. Infused with some liqueur — Amaretto? Loretta! Pay attention to me! I am the bride! Who made the cake?”

Loretta turned and smiled again, and Lynne, now looking red-faced and very young, slipped away.

Loretta said, “Veniero’s. They were the real reason I needed you to have a wedding!”

Richie slipped his arm around Ivy, turned her toward him, and kissed her as he had failed to do after the ceremony, deeply, lovingly, thankfully, appreciatively. Saved again.

—

CHARLIE WAS a blond now. He had been a blond for fourteen hours, and every time he looked in the rearview mirror and saw his springy hair, he laughed. Riley, his girlfriend, laughed, too, and squeezed his hand. She was now a redhead. First she had done herself, and then they had gone to the drugstore, gotten the dye, and done him. Riley maintained that if you were leaving home in your new Tercel wagon, heading west on the I-70 toward Kansas and Colorado, out of the woods and onto the plains, to Denver, then new hair was the best preparation. After Denver, who knew? But they both had jobs. Charlie would be working for an outdoor outfitter that also ran hiking tours and rafting trips in the Rockies, and Riley had an internship with the Solar Energy Research Institute. If that jerk Reagan hadn’t cut 90 percent of the institute’s funding (“What did I tell you?” his mom always said, as if anyone she knew had ever voted for Reagan), she might have had a paid job, but an internship could evolve. Rents were cheap; parks were plentiful; guiding raft trips down the Colorado would be fun for Charlie, with his restless temperament. Riley was a great believer in temperament and nature over nurture. Charlie loved Riley. She was never depressed, she could always figure out how to talk people into something (most notably Charlie’s mom and dad), and nothing scared her, not even defunding of solar initiatives. As a redhead, she was quite striking.

And so they drove on, past Topeka now, almost to Abilene. The landscape was flat and hot and larded with names that Riley read off the map to him—“Tonganoxie!” “Salina!” “Cawker City!” “Kanopolis!”—that he then said backward to her “Eixonagnot”—which he pronounced in the French manner—“Anilas, Rekwac Ytic, Siloponak.” Why did they all sound Slavic? (And then they laughed again.) She threw down the map, got up on her knees, and kissed him while he was driving, all along the side of his face. He was twenty-one; he had a wonderful girlfriend and a new car. He stepped on the gas, and the needle eased toward ninety.

—

FRANK WAS SITTING across from Loretta at the dinner table when Andy said, “I got a letter from Frances Upjohn today, and Jim isn’t joining her, not even for the Arc. I guess that’s in three weeks or something.”

“What arc?” said Chance.

Loretta said, “The Arc is a horse race.”

Chance, who was four, had his own pony in California, which he was required to ride bareback. He nodded knowingly.

“Why not?” said Frank.

“He doesn’t want to miss the cranberry harvest, he says, but I—”

“What cranberry harvest?” said Loretta as she sat Binky upright in her lap and hooked the cup of her nursing bra. Frank had to admire the shameless way she nursed Binky wherever she was and whenever Binky crossed her eyes in dissatisfaction. It made for a quiet babyhood. Andy held out her arms, and Loretta gave Binky to her, then went back to eating her own food, which she herself had cooked — veal scaloppini, good. Frank said, “East of Philadelphia. Near Chatsworth. He’s got three thousand acres down there, and the cranberry harvest started a week or so ago.”

Loretta’s face blossomed into a look both delighted and approving. She said, “Three thousand acres?”

“He’s talked about buying a farm for twenty-five years. Horses, plums in France, poppies in France, a vineyard in Sonoma, even wheat there for a while. But he ended up with cranberries.”

“Not scenic,” said Andy. “Frances says that he won’t go to Paris at all anymore. And apparently, it’s very hard to find escorts to take her to parties. You can’t go without an escort. She’s furious.”

“She can find an escort,” said Frank. “But she’s used to standing beside the lightbulb and having the moths flutter around her. He doesn’t want to be that anymore.”

“Will you take me?” Frank realized that Loretta was speaking to him, and talking about New Jersey, not Paris.

Oddly enough, he said yes.