Early Warning

Andy cleared her throat. “Kristjan and Erik kept her in the barn for the rest of her life, in a stall, next to the horses. They had gone to the asylum, which wasn’t far away — Mendota, I think — and they didn’t like the idea that all those people would see Signy and talk about her, so they took care of her as if she were one of the animals. I think she lived about five years after the baby.”

Dr. Katz said, “And yet?”

Andy said, “And yet?”

“I mean, this story sticks in your mind. You say you think about it frequently, and yet you tell it with great equanimity. I am, if I might say so, struck by your tone.”

“My tone?”

“Yes.”

For the first time ever, Dr. Katz leaned around and caught her gaze. He said, “To me, this story seems to be one of great injustice. But you seem not to delve into the feeling of it.”

Andy said, “But what about the time Uncle Freddy, who was the second child of the oldest brother, went out in the evening to bring in the cows, and fell into the pond, and it was so cold that he couldn’t make it back to the house before he froze to death? He was fourteen. They found him before bedtime, but only because his mother happened to look out the window and ask why there was a cow in the front yard.”

But Dr. Katz only sighed again. Andy wondered what she could come up with that would move him, actually move him, and then, maybe, make her feel something, anything.

1959

RUTH BAXTER WON Claire over the first day of secretarial school when she said, “You’re from Usherton? Aren’t you lucky! I had to come from Buffalo Center,” and without even pausing to think, Claire exclaimed, “Oh, you poor thing!” Ruth had a plan for every hour of every day. She was twenty now. She would dress perfectly, cultivating verve and style, until she was well out of the secretarial pool, and then she would cast about among the younger men in the lower reaches of management, and attain herself an ambitious husband exactly five years older than she was. By the time she was twenty-eight, she would have a house in West Des Moines, two children, a dog, and a charge account at Younkers. The ultimate goal was a membership in the Wakonda Country Club. If she and the future husband had to be transferred (sometimes that happened), Kansas City was preferable, St. Louis acceptable. The first step, getting a job, was easy as pie — they both ended up at Midwest Assurance.

Ruth, Claire had to admit, was even plainer than she was, or, rather, she had begun with fewer evident assets, though she didn’t have to wear glasses. But once she had shaved and plucked and dyed and girdled and curled and sprayed, once she had modified her accent to make it less Minnesotan and more unidentifiable, once she had taught herself to react to everything any boss said as if it were electrifying, she seemed to be on her way, so Claire duly plucked and painted and cultivated. She also took Ruth to her optometrist and had her choose Claire’s new frames: “cat eyes,” black with gold along the upper curve. Claire’s manner was not as arch and vivacious as Ruth’s — she could not manage that — but by thinking of Henry and Rosa, she could manage some good-natured irony and a few amused observations.

The first reason for turning down the proposal she had from Wayne Gifford, who was twenty-seven and worked in Claims, was not, oddly enough, that she didn’t especially like him; it was that she didn’t want to tell Ruth that she had attained their common goal first. But the second reason, that she didn’t especially like him, was good enough, too. For years she had thought that her main goal in choosing a spouse was that he not remind her of Frank, Joe, or Henry, that he remind her of her father, but not be a farmer. Wayne did not remind her of Frank, Joe, Henry, or her father — he was not good-looking, not nice, not smart, and he didn’t seem to enjoy her company all that much. While she was ridding herself of Wayne, the fellow Ruth had her eye on, Ed Gersh, introduced her to Paul Darnell.