“I know.”
“The Grumman people Frank knows have interviewed me three times.”
“I know.”
“There’s a fortune to be made there.”
“Is there?”
Arthur didn’t say anything, but, yes, there was. “However.”
Lillian turned her fork over on her plate.
“I can’t say I liked my prospective new colleagues terribly much. Very serious, serious people.”
“Aren’t your present colleagues very serious people?”
“They have been whittled and honed and pared and polished. At the bottom they have a few qualities left.”
“Which ones?” said Lillian.
“Wit. Dread. Hope. Not always in that order.”
“I don’t really like the new house.”
Arthur said, “Shall we do the easy thing, then?”
And once again that day, Lillian just nodded.
—
JOE AND HIS UNCLE JOHN kept arguing about what to plant, how much to plant, whether to leave some acreage fallow. Joe had seen a picture of stored corn reserves in a Time magazine, and the picture spooked him — hills and billows of grain just sitting there. The article said there were something like a billion bushels in storage, and no market — maybe no future market until 1980, not for seventeen years. Joe remembered the old saying “The best place to store corn is hogs, and the second best is whiskey.” His dad had made use of the first option, though not the second. However, Joe didn’t have hogs anymore — they were too much work for one man with no one to help him. Yes, the government had bought the surplus corn in the winter; a few of those billion bushels no doubt had belonged to Joe Langdon and John Vogel. John had no doubt that the government would pay for it again this year, store it again, and come up with something to do with it — rocket fuel, maybe. In the fall, the Canadians had sold almost seven million tons of wheat to the Russians — a first, as far as anyone knew, but secret deals happened all the time, didn’t they? Wheat wasn’t corn, however, and Joe hadn’t paid too much attention, though everyone sitting in the Denby café had been pretty hot under the collar, half of them wondering why the Canadians would feed the enemy (“Well, the Cuban missiles weren’t pointed at Montreal, were they?” said Bobby Dugan. “Every man for himself, and why not?”), the other half wondering how the American government had been so stupid as not to get in on the deal (“Food is food; if they’re starving, we’re no better than Stalin was, not to sell it to them”). At least the government was consistent, thought Joe. It would be a sign of craziness to feed them with one hand and blow them up with the other.
But that didn’t solve his problem about what to plant. He found himself longing for oats, but there wasn’t even a pretend market for those, and how would he harvest them? Corn was the tall, golden darling. Those broad leaves rose, stretched out, and soaked up the sunshine, and one kernel planted turned into hundreds harvested — and there was your problem. Plenty of soybeans in those storage bins, no two ways about that, but Joe decided in the end to plant more beans this year than corn. They were starting to make stuff out of beans — not just oil and feed, but paint, plastic, and fiber. John thought beans were a passing fad, though the fad hadn’t passed in fifteen years. Joe knew he could press the point, and John would yield.
—
AS SOON AS she came back from Caracas, Andy made her first appointment with Dr. Smith, whose office was in Princeton. Dr. Smith’s house on Green Street in Princeton was much more difficult to get to from Englewood Cliffs than Dr. Grossman’s office on West Seventy-eighth Street, but the inconvenience of the trip was part of its appeal.
Dr. Smith was taller than Andy, with eyes so blue that they were used-up-looking, as if Dr. Smith were on his way to becoming an albino, but his gaze was keen, and he had a beaky nose and muscular wrists. He shook her hand and looked her up and down, then led her to his therapy room. His fee was twice Dr. Grossman’s. She had not fired Dr. Grossman, or vice versa. Dr. Grossman thought that her issues with her father were on the verge of being resolved. Lars Bergstrom had always been a quiet man, but powerful in his way. If they could get to the heart of Lars’s pattern of withholding affection and approval from Hildy (the child Andy) and Sven, there would be real improvement.
Dr. Smith said, “You may notice that I don’t have a couch. Adults should sit up. If you need to lie down, or wrestle with some objects, or hit things, that’s what those two mats in the corner are for. This room has been soundproofed. You are free to misbehave, and also to behave.” Andy looked around. The office could as easily have been a public bathroom — that was the thought that came to her. He asked her if she had ever seen a psychoanalyst or a therapist before. She shook her head no. He asked her how she had found him. She said in the phone book. That struck him so that he barked out a laugh. He said, “Well, I’m in there, but no one ever admitted finding me there before.”
Dr. Smith said, “Here is a piece of paper. I want you to write the first five words that come into your mind. I will give you thirty seconds.” Andy wrote “fallout, contamination, beautiful, screaming, maple.” The first two were obvious; the third was about Princeton; the fourth was about the boys; and the last word was about the trees she had noticed on the way into town. Dr. Smith said, “Can you make a single sentence that uses all of these words?” Andy shook her head, but Dr. Smith said, “Just try.” The sentence she came up with was “Because of the fallout and contamination, the beautiful woman was screaming underneath the golden maple tree.” As soon as she said this sentence, she could see it, a blonde in a ski outfit, standing halfway up a wooded hillside, rubbing her hands madly down her arms, over her face, and the glittering particles of plutonium and uranium, rising up and falling back, dancing around like sprays of water as she attempted to brush them off. Every time she screamed, the particles would form a little tornado around her mouth and get sucked in.
“Your automatic response, Mrs. Langdon, would seem to be awe. You speak of fearful things, but they don’t frighten you, they impress you. I would go so far as to say that they stun you, and slow your reflexes in some way. They preoccupy you, and you don’t mind that. You gain nourishment from them, even at the expense of some sort of imagined negation of the self.” Andy stared at the doctor. He sounded like an ass.
“Mrs. Langdon,” said Dr. Smith, “it may simply be that your capacity for spiritual experience hasn’t yet been realized. That what you perceive as ennui or even indifference is simply your search for meaning in a life that strikes you as false and superficial.” Andy nodded. “You may or may not ever return to this office. I don’t suggest that you do. Part of the reason that my fees are so high is that I want them to mean something to my patients — and the thing I want them to mean is sacrifice. Are these fees, should you come three or four times a week, difficult for you to meet?” Andy nodded, though they weren’t — Uncle Jens’s investments were up to several millions. Everything she had spent on Dr. Katz and Dr. Grossman had been mere fiscal effervescence. But “yes” was the right answer, of course. “What I show you, the paths down which I lead you, might well be frightening, but that is what enlightenment entails.” Andy nodded again. “No, please don’t nod or say yes right now. Go away. Think about it for a long time. Look at your children and your husband and your life, and make up your mind. The journey you will embark upon is a journey into the unknown.” Andy prevented herself from nodding again. They stood up. He walked her to her car.
—
AT EXACTLY the same time that Andy was turning from Nassau onto Witherspoon, Frank was standing on the corner of Forty-eighth and Eighth Avenue, scanning the crowd for Lydia Forêt, Joan Fontaine, the love of his life. They had chosen the Belvedere as just the sort of hotel that no one at Fremont Oil or The New York Times would ever frequent, and also a place too expensive for Lydia’s husband, Olivier Forêt, from Calais, France. Olivier managed construction sites. He found the beams and the boards, the teamsters and the plumbers, the painters and the Mohawk construction workers. Olivier did not believe in fashion; he believed in utility. When Frank expressed disbelief that a Frenchman could feel this way, Lydia said, “Not only is he not like a Parisian, he’s never once been to Paris. The French from the countryside aren’t like Parisians at all.” There she was. He saw her at least a minute and a half before she saw him, and so he had time to admire the way, as she turned her head to check the traffic, her jawline sharpened and her cheekbone accented itself. She smiled. Frank hoped it was because she was thinking of him.