Authors: Jane Smiley
Andy said, “I take it your grandparents are no longer living?”
“No, no. They died pretty young. I think Grandpa was sixty and Grandma was sixty-four.”
“That is young,” said Andy, and he stared at her, at the life she had made herself by contemplating death so often and so thoroughly for as long as she could remember, training herself not to let death come unexpectedly, to step aside or look over her shoulder at every tire squeal, to note every slippery patch, every dangling wire, every scent of gas, every sign of infection. Frank had been alert, but never quite as alert as she was to the skull within the beautiful visage. Finally, the young man said, “You look in excellent health, ma’am.”
Andy said, “I can’t complain,” and for some reason she laughed, and then he laughed. He took a deep breath and embraced his briefcase, as if to fortify his resolve. Andy sipped her mint tea. Her hand was just bones now, but no arthritis, at least.
He opened the briefcase and pulled out some papers. He said, “It does appear, as we look into Michael Langdon’s estate, that he was making deposits into an account that is in your name. I am told by Mrs. Langdon that these were support payments to you.”
“Or, perhaps,” said Andy, “restitution. His antics in 2008 cost me eighteen million dollars.” She grabbed this amount out of the ozone—her clearest memory of the Uncle Jens fund was from about 1955, when it hit a hundred grand because of real-estate investments Frank had made with that Mafia type they met at Belmont Park.
“Mrs. Langdon said nothing to me about restitution.”
Andy said, “How about money laundering? When the cash started being deposited was when all those offshore accounts were being investigated. Possibly he was stashing his money in my account to hide it, so I paid my taxes.” She smiled politely.
“As you will remember, Mrs. Langdon, it was decided by the Supreme Court that offshore accounts are entirely legal, and that it was in the public interest for corporations to follow uniform international tax laws as set up by the Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, and so there was no actual reason for Mr. Langdon to, as you say, launder any money.”
“After 2017.”
“True, that decision did come down a year and a half ago. However, that is neither here nor there from Mrs. Langdon’s point of view. She would like an accounting of the money you received from your son.”
“I can send you the bank statements.”
“And, if you don’t mind, can you estimate how much is in that account right now?”
“I believe a hundred and six dollars.”
Now the young man looked taken aback. He said, “Mrs. Langdon estimates that Mr. Langdon deposited at least a million dollars in that account.”
“In the end, more, I would say.”
“And you felt that this was your money, so you spent it?” He
looked around the Hut in amazement. His gaze paused at the wall oven, as if she might have put the cash in there.
Andy said, “I wouldn’t say that I spent it, though it undoubtedly has been spent. I gave it away.”
He licked his lips.
“Ma’am, have you kept a list of the persons or organizations you gave that money to? And do you have your tax returns from the last six years?”
Andy said, “Oh, my goodness! You will have to subpoena me for those! But it isn’t going to do Loretta any good. That money is gone, as well it should be. If the IRS wants to put a ninety-eight-year-old woman in jail, they are welcome to do so.” She again gave him her best, most radiant, and, she knew some would say, skeletal smile. He looked taken aback.
Andy said, “I didn’t give a penny to the Catholic Church.”
He didn’t say anything to that. He took another sip of his tea. She said, “Will you tell me something?” She made sure she sounded wheedling, kind, and decrepit—she even got a little bit of a shake into her voice.
He said, “What’s that?”
“What has happened to the ranch in California? What was it, the Angel Ranch.”
“The Angelina Ranch has been donated by Mr. Chance Langdon to the California Rangeland Trust, and he has moved to ten or so acres somewhere around Santa Ynez. Since the ranch sits square on the Monterey Shale, he thought maybe the trust was in a better position to preserve it, should fracking become viable again. Of course, there is the drought aspect as well.”
They both shook their heads regretfully.
“Mrs. Langdon has no quarrel with her son’s decision.”
“She has her good points,” said Andy.
The lawyer said, “Yes, ma’am. She does.”
—
WHEN
, after a year of on-and-off suspense about Michael’s “accident,” Richie told Jessica over breakfast that it was he himself who had killed him, run him down in the Toyota because he laughed at Richie and gave him the finger, she lathered some pear jam on her
toast and said, in her straightforward Jessica way, “I don’t believe that.”
Richie pushed his plate away, even though he’d hardly touched a thing. “I tell you something that it has taken me a year to confess, and you don’t believe me?”
“I believe that you think that you killed him, but I don’t believe that you did.” The toast was so crisp he could hear it crunching. Jessica did so love to eat.
“You think I have dementia or something?”
She set her elbows on the table and leaned toward him. “Darling, don’t you realize that you ask me certain things over and over, like whether we’ve watched
Crystal and Cooper
already this week, and why isn’t it on the DVR?”
“I do ask you that?”
“Yes.”
“Why isn’t it on the DVR?”
“Because we watched the latest episode Monday night and then you deleted it.”
“Do I know how to operate the DVR?”
“You do.”
“Did I enjoy
Crystal and Cooper
?”
“You seemed to.” She shook her head. She thought he was joking, and maybe he was, a little. He said, “I am sixty-six. My mom is almost a hundred. Aunt Claire is eighty. Everyone in our family is sharp as a tack.”
Jessica said, “I know that, sweetie.”
He let the subject drop, but every so often, he called the investigator who had been put on the case at the beginning and asked him if there was any new information. The investigator was sympathetic—he had cousins who were twins, very close—but he never had new information. Finally, after the fifth call, he said, “Congressman, I would like to pursue this, but we are so low on funds that I would have to do it on my own time, and there are other cases that seem more important to me. Not to mention the backlog in the courts. There are a few retired investigators you might contact to see if one of them would do it—but it’s a boring case. It’s a hit-and-run. It’s more or less meaningless. Now, you were telling me about that young man you knew, who was shot out in Washington State?”
“Cousin,” said Richie.
“Yes, sir. Well, that is more interesting in its way, because those gangs of kids that they have in certain places—there in Washington State, but also in Kansas and Wisconsin and Oklahoma, and a lot of places where the economy has simply vanished these last years, they are a real symptom of the times we live in. They don’t care if they murder, they don’t care if they die. They’ve got nothing to look forward to, so, as with your cousin, they kill for a twenty-dollar bill. We thought those types were a third-world phenom; well, look where they are now. At least they got those boys, and they’re in jail. Sixteen people had to die before they got ’em, but they got ’em. That’s all I have to say.”
“Thank you for your help.”
“I wish I
could
help, Congressman, but you’ve got to accept the fact that whoever killed your brother got away with it.”
After that call, Richie thought about those kids in Washington. Some had been fourteen (the most ruthless age, in Richie’s estimation), though the apparent killer was eighteen—he had been living at the park for three years. His father had been a migrant from Amarillo, Texas. He farmed for ADM for a year, but couldn’t support his family doing it. The son began stealing, was kicked out of the house; the wife died mysteriously (domestic violence was no longer investigated, as a policy to save money); then the father shot himself in the mouth. The other four kids had similar backgrounds. It was the same in Oregon, the same wherever there was still water, still even the smallest hope of making a living. The boys drank from the river, shot and ate animals, ambushed passersby. The sixteen bodies (Guthrie had been number fourteen; fifteen and sixteen were a local couple, the boys’ biggest mistake) were left under bushes for the vultures and the crows to take care of them. Two of them drove Guthrie’s car to a local town, where they spent his last $38.56. Then they left the car in a parking lot and hitchhiked back to the park. Until the death of the local couple, people in the town had thought they were “harmless,” figured they couldn’t “do nothing about them—gonna ship them back to Texas?” Was he like these boys? Since he had done what he did, why did what they did fill him with horror? Sometimes he allowed himself to believe that what he had done had a certain justice
to it, or, at least, a certain practicality. Other times he thought he had fulfilled his destiny—you name which one, psychological, mythological, political, masculine. But no one believed he had done it. No one believed that Congressman Langdon (D-NY) had the balls.
—
CLAIRE
’
S HOUSE WAS
big enough for Jesse and Jen to feel almost comfortable. It was certainly well equipped—Jesse only had to think of a tool, walk into Carl’s old workshop, and find it ready to hand. They had moved in originally for Claire’s sake. Jesse’s job was to maintain the gardens and the property, sell vegetables at the city market when they were harvested, and keep the place up, though Carl had been so careful that only the most routine maintenance was needed. Jen’s job, unspoken, was to keep an eye on Claire. The very first evening, Claire had looked at them across the supper table and said, “I am eighty. I will never leave here, because I feel Carl’s presence here,” which meant, Live here, take care of me, I will bequeath you the house. It seemed like a decent bargain, not least because Claire had almost no sentimental attachment to the farm: I love it here; look at these vegetables; and to think, you can weed the garden, then take the train to the Field Museum and pick up some pomegranate balsamic on the way home. She didn’t insist that they view their eviction as a salvation, but she set the example.
After Guthrie’s car and then his body were found, though, Claire became the caretaker. It was a parent’s worst nightmare—first he disappears without a word, as if he just can’t take you anymore, and then his remains are found somewhere you’ve never been or he’s never been, until now. Guthrie, the riddle; Guthrie, the boy who smiled no matter what, and deflected all questions, all looks of concern; Guthrie, aged thirty-four, the boy who was always about to get it together. Guthrie, who died before you could look him in the eye and say, “I told you not to enlist, I told you not to be a sucker.” But he hadn’t told him, and look at Perky, “John”—it had all worked out for him.
Jesse did not think that Jen would recover from this. She had lost twenty pounds, she cried all the time, she refused antidepressants. He had never, never seen her not bounce back—even when they moved off the farm, she had truly seemed to believe that the opportunity to
get rid of a lot of junk outweighed the injustice and the dislocation. She loved Claire, she loved Chicago, she loved the city market and the people she was meeting. Until. Now she could not look at Jesse; he looked too much like Guthrie. She spent her time with Claire, and Claire allowed it, comforted her over and over. Some nights she slept in Claire’s room, and Jesse could hear them through the heating vents, talking. It didn’t have to be about Guthrie—they talked about their childhoods and the news and knitting sweaters for Claire’s grandchildren.
Sometime after dawn, he woke up to find Claire in her robe, sitting on his bed. He jerked upward, and Claire took his hand. She said, “It’s all right. She’s asleep. It’s me that couldn’t sleep. I thought you might be awake already.”
“Aunt Claire, those days are gone. Even when I was farming, I never got up before eight.”
“No cows to milk,” said Claire.
“Nothing to love at all,” said Jesse. “What good was it?”
“Ah,” said Claire. “Hmm. What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama’s lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in the barn when the sunlight was shafting through the cracks in the boards, heating everything up.”
Jesse said, “I liked a big harvest, but I didn’t love it. Not like my dad. He would put his hands into a bin of corn kernels and let them flow through his fingers, and he would pick up the cobs and sniff them.”
“Joe was a very sensuous man, and I am old enough to say that! Oh, I loved that house, the Frederick house. I remember, when I was six, so it was right around the end of the war, I used to ease out whatever door Mama wasn’t near and walk over there. It seemed like there was such a hill between our house and theirs, but it was just a little rise. I would walk in the weeds along the edge of the big field, and then I would just stand there, looking up at the row of windows, and the upstairs porch off the back; then I would walk around and look at the ripply glass panes in the front door. It was painted a minty rust-green then. I thought the color was very appealing. Whatever Mama didn’t like, I liked, that’s for sure.”
“She was a character,” said Jesse.
“And characters don’t always make the best mothers, but, with a little distance and Henry’s help, I came to appreciate her.”
Jesse did not say what he was thinking, that because, according to the police report, Guthrie probably felt no pain—the bullet went straight through his brainstem and cerebellum, then lodged in the headrest of his seat, and so he had lucked out—he had no worries anymore. If you were not religious, then you could imagine him at rest; and if you were religious, you could imagine him released, redeemed, reborn. Sometimes Jesse thought of this as his father had (redemption in the soil itself, in compost, in the memories of those who loved you), and sometimes he thought of this as his mother had, redemption in the arms of the Lord (and she had always told him those arms were wide open, no matter what certain pastors might say). You could grieve the strange horror of Guthrie’s demise, and what that meant about the world they lived in, or you could grieve Guthrie’s loss, or you could grieve your own loss. Or you could condemn yourself for bequeathing this new world to your children. He put his hands over his face, and his aunt Claire patted his knee. She said, “Oh, Jess. I don’t know what to say.”