Early Warning

The master bedroom was a work of art — Hugh the historian had built the headboard out of spalted maple. His mother had knitted the bedspread, moss-green lace. The two bedside tables were etched glass, made by Tina. In one corner, there was an antique rocking chair with a rattan seat. Debbie was sitting cross-legged on the floor, as if she didn’t dare touch any of these beautiful things. Arthur sat in the rocking chair and eased it over toward her. Then he did what Lillian would have done: he started rocking and didn’t say a word. Lillian always said, “If you don’t ask them, they will tell you.”

Debbie didn’t look at him, but she did say, “Do you remember when you were forty?”

“More or less,” said Arthur.

“Did you feel grown up?”

“Only reluctantly.”

“Everyone says that!”

“They do?” said Arthur, genuinely surprised.

“Something like it. Everyone wants to be young, everyone wants to be irresponsible.”

“Or maybe,” said Arthur, “not responsible.”

“I always wanted to grow up!”

“I understand that. Our household was chaos.”

“And everyone loved it but me! Are you sure I wasn’t adopted?”

“I think you were a statistical outlier.”

Debbie said, “But I didn’t grow up! I didn’t! I just left certain feelings behind without realizing it, and they’re always coming back.”

“I know,” said Arthur.

“Don’t tell me that.”

“But I have to tell you that, sweetheart. I have to. Because that is my experience. Ask your uncle Frank; ask your aunt Andy. Ask her — she’s had as much psychoanalysis as anyone; she would know.”

“She is a mess,” said Debbie.

“But a strangely prescient mess,” said Arthur.

“Why did you love Tim for being bad and hate me for being good?” She said this quietly, as if she were only asking, as if no resentment remained.

Arthur leaned forward, took her chin in his hand. He didn’t know what to say, but he did want to look into her face. In spite of the fact that Arthur now experienced Debbie more or less as his jailer, he summoned up some appreciation: she was thorough, she was careful, she had premature wrinkles between her eyebrows from years of conscientious worry, and underneath it all, she had a phantomlike air of vulnerability-transformed-into-bravery that perhaps he had never noticed before. He said, “You must know that you don’t love children for being good or bad. I know you know that.”

“Why do you love them?”

“Because you do,” said Arthur. He paused, then said, “Because they don’t know what’s coming and maybe you do.”

“Doesn’t that make them tragic figures?” asked Debbie. “I can’t think that.”

“You do think that,” said Arthur, “because you—”

“Because I put them on the bus in the morning and take them off the bus in the afternoon, because I won’t feed them sugar, because the house has been childproofed, because they wear helmets when they ride their bikes.”

“And so,” said Arthur, “we loved you because you made sure the gate to the swimming pool was latched, and we loved Tim because he jumped off the roof of the house into the deep end, and we loved Dean because he was daring enough to get that fourth foul in every game but careful enough not to get the fifth, and we loved Tina because she tie-dyed all the pillowcases when everyone was out one afternoon. Who you are shapes how you are loved.”

“You didn’t love us equally.”

“We loved you individually. How could we not?”

“How could you not,” Debbie said.

After he got back to his apartment that evening, Arthur remembered how completely he’d thought he’d solved the problem of his own childhood once he’d claimed Lillian and enveloped her in his dream — no one idle, no one beset by solitude, everyone laughing. The problem he had not solved, or even known existed, was how quickly it passed, every joke, every embrace, every babyhood and childhood, every moment of thinking that he had things figured out for good, and also every moment, just like this one, when his spirits lifted though he hadn’t seen the boy, knew next to nothing about him, had only heard his voice and his laugh and his enthusiasm.

An A.A Knopf Reading Group Guide

Early Warning by Jane Smiley

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of Early Warning, the captivating and emotionally engaging journey of the Langdons, a farm family from Iowa, through the mid-twentieth century.

Discussion Questions

1. Early Warning is the second volume of The Last Hundred Years trilogy and builds upon the characters first introduced in volume one, Some Luck. Had you read Some Luck before starting this novel? If you did, how did you reorient yourself in the world of the Langdons? And if not, what was it like to meet the family for the first time here in 1953?