Early Warning

“Of course,” said Claire. “It’s a twenty-pounder. You look nice.” Henry had on a gray suit with narrow pants, pointy-toed shoes, a white shirt, and a narrow dark tie. Claire looked him up and down and said, “You look like a Beatle now.”

“Which one?”

“Stuart Sutcliffe.”

“The sexy one!” said Henry.

Jacob was in a medium-brown glen plaid, blue shirt, regular shoes. He looked better, and richer, than Henry. He said, “Who do I look like?”

Claire said, “No one in Des Moines.”

He laughed.

Paul came in. Claire saw his eyebrows shoot up and then down; then he smiled and said, “Jacob! Didn’t know you were in this country.”

“I’m at Wisconsin.”

“Go, Badgers,” said Paul.

Joe, Lois, Minnie, and the kids bustled in ten minutes later, followed by Rosanna, who was already talking as she came through the door. “Well, after all that wet weather the last few days, I was sure the roads would be frozen solid with the cold snap, but Joe—” She caught sight of Jacob and stopped dead. Then she looked around to make sure she was in the right house.

Henry stepped in, put his arms around her, and said, “Hi, Mom. Merry Christmas.” He kissed her firmly on both cheeks, and, Claire saw, he held her rather tightly, as if restraining her. She said, “My goodness.”

Henry spoke smoothly and brightly. “I want you to meet Jacob Palmer. He’s a friend of mine from England. Remember when I worked on that dig in Yorkshire? Now he’s getting his doctorate at Wisconsin.”

Jacob smiled and held out his hand. They all saw Rosanna hesitate, and they all saw Henry lean toward her slightly. She held out her hand rather limply, and Jacob grasped it. As he said, “I’ve heard all about you, Mrs. Langdon,” in a crisp and jolly way, Rosanna seemed to remember herself, and participate in the hand shaking. But when it was over, she stepped back, went around everyone, and said to Claire, “How’s the turkey?”

It was Minnie, of course, who engaged Jacob in conversation, while Joe undressed the kids and Lois took the food into the kitchen. When Claire followed her, Rosanna was closing the oven door. She stood up and said, “What accent is that?”

“He’s Jamaican.”

“You’ve met him before?”

“In England, when we visited Henry last year.”

“He and Henry are friends?”

“Looks that way,” said Lois, neutrally.

Rosanna pursed her lips, then said, “Well, we have to be hospitable.”

Claire felt a sudden flush of anger.

Rosanna put her hands on her hips. “But I thought those riots in Watts last summer were just terrible. A hundred people were killed.”

Henry appeared in the doorway. He said, “That’s not true.”

“Well—” said Rosanna.

Henry stared at her. Claire had never seen Henry look so strict. Usually, he looked agreeably distant, as if he didn’t quite speak their language. Lois was pouring brandy over the fruitcake. Then Henry said, “And Jacob has never been to Los Angeles. So he knows just about as much about those riots as you do. His specialty is the Caribbean slave trade.”

Rosanna said, “They don’t have that anymore….”

“You need to talk to Jacob about that.”

“Well!” said Rosanna, as if she was about to lose her temper. She plopped down in a chair. But then she looked up at Henry, who was staring at her as if she were a misbehaving student who had better straighten up and fly right. Claire looked at the kitchen clock and said, “Do you think we really have to turn this turkey on its back?”

Rosanna snapped, “I don’t understand why you cooked it on its side in the first place. I never heard of such a thing.”

“Craig Claiborne—”

“Oh,” exclaimed Rosanna, “some man!”

But that was the end of it. Once she had mashed the potatoes and made the gravy, Rosanna settled down, and by the time she and Claire carried the food into the dining room, everyone was seated around the table. Gray was already in his high chair, laughing and receiving a piece of roll from Jesse, who was also laughing. Jacob was seated between Joe and Minnie; they were deep into a discussion of everyone’s favorite topic, the weather. Terrible in Madison, said Jacob. He smiled. “Last year, when I first got there, I had never been anywhere that cold in the winter before. I was walking across the campus on a day when it was, oh, twenty below zero, and one of my teachers came running up to me and asked if I had a hat. I said no, and she gave me hers, right off her head. She told me that you lose sixty percent of your body heat through the top of your head. No one had bothered to tell me that.”

Everyone agreed that it was much colder in Wisconsin than in Iowa, and snowier and windier, too, and then the conversation turned to Minneapolis, and Rosanna asked, if you had to live somewhere “up there,” well, which would be the lesser evil, Milwaukee or Minneapolis? And someone knew someone who lived in Fargo — who was that again? Claire and Henry exchanged a smile.

1966