“How can I leave him alone?” Alma would exclaim. “That’s his problem. He’s been left alone for all his life!”
He had to admit that, for all her eye rolling, Ivy agreed with her parents’ views. The problem was their style — Ivy thought they were loud, messy, and rude. She loved them in private, but would go nowhere with them in public, not even to a deli.
He kissed her on the forehead, then more slowly on the lips, then took the corner of a dish towel and dabbed lightly at her eyes to wipe the tears. He said, “The only reason Reagan got elected was because Carter was such an incompetent. My uncle Joe, who is the nicest guy in the world, thinks this grain embargo is going to bankrupt him. It’s like every single thing Carter did was wrong. That was Reagan’s point.”
“He’s too smooth! He’s just a mouthpiece for big business, like when he was on that show and then he was a governor! My God, he was awful in California.”
Richie said, “Give him a chance. Let him be the best of a bad lot, okay? Just let him be that for a while.” But he didn’t dare bring up the dinner invitation. For all her good nature, he knew that Loretta would, indeed, demand some humble pie — she was like that. And they couldn’t just put it off: Loretta never forgot, and she kept score. The election, say, gave her ten points, but not showing up for dinner and “taking your medicine” would give her a point, too.
When he called Ivy at lunchtime, she said, “Okay, we can go.”
He said, “Go where?”
“Their place.”
“They invited us?”
“Richie, I know she called you this morning and invited us for dinner. She called me at the office just to make sure you told me.”
“She really is like the CIA, isn’t she?”
Ivy laughed, which meant she was getting over the election.
Richie said, in a wheedling voice, “What difference does it make who won? They’re all the same, really.”
“You’re hopeless,” said Ivy.
“We only see them four or five times a year. It’s like a penance. Or maybe like interest payments. We may both hate to visit our families, but we owe something every so often, don’t we?”
Ivy said, “Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Four hours. I can take it.”
When the argument started (after the veal, before the Sambuca), the girls were like trained debaters, and Richie and Michael kept exchanging looks. Ivy went first: “Whatever you say, just don’t start with me about Adam Smith. He did not trust merchants. He thought they would get together and shit on everyone else if they possibly could.”
Richie said, “I would rather talk about the hostages in Iran than this.” They ignored him.
“Adam Smith?” said Michael. “Was that the guy you slept with last summer?”
Richie kicked him under the table — rather hard, in fact. Michael said, “Ouch.”
The girls were used to their shenanigans.
Loretta said, “I don’t need a theorist. No one does. I just have to look around and see what a mess all of these agencies I pay for are making of the country. People want to do stuff, and they can’t, because there’s too much paperwork.”
“Like set fire to the Cuyahoga River.”
Point for Ivy, thought Richie.
“If people wanted it cleaned up, they would have cleaned it up,” said Loretta.
“They did want it cleaned up, and it has been cleaned up,” said Ivy, “by EPA regulations. Not by the invisible hand.”
At this point, Michael ran his fingertip lightly up the back of Loretta’s neck. She laughed, but grabbed his hand. She said, “You wanted it cleaned up. But maybe those people living there were willing to make the tradeoff between jobs and a little pollution. There’s no proof that pollution is bad. Maybe it’s just stuff that’s in the wrong place.”
Michael said, “When Loretta was little, her room was papered in DDT-impregnated wallpaper. Just for kids. Donald Duck pictures on it.”
Loretta spun around. She said, “What was wrong with that? It was a good idea. It killed the mosquitoes that landed on the wall.”
Meanwhile, Ivy was staring.
Loretta said, “If you ban DDT, and then millions die from malaria, you haven’t done anyone any good.”
“Let the market kill them,” said Ivy.
“At least it’s their choice.”
“How about full warnings on the roll of paper, saying what is known about DDT?”
“We know it will kill mosquitoes. We don’t know it will hurt kids. Anyway, I guess the market decided about DDT-impregnated wallpaper, and that was that. I haven’t seen it lately. Or lead-based paint, or X-ray machines in shoe stores. Things come and go. If you don’t let them come and go, then you get like Russia.”
Richie thought maybe she had Ivy there.
But then Ivy said, “Russia isn’t the only alternative. Banks in the U.S. used to print all the money, and now the government prints it, because a free market in dollar bills didn’t work and was chaos. There are things that the government should do, and things that companies should do. I don’t want Russia, but I don’t want the Mafia, either.” Michael was beginning to look bored, and Richie sympathized. Michael said, “I loved The Godfather Part II. Pow-pow! Let’s have the Sambuca. You do this thing — you put a coffee bean in it and set it on fire. Burns off all the alcohol. Pow! Pow! Oh, you got me.” Michael fell to the floor.
Loretta said, “Reagan is tough. The Iranians know it, and the hostages will be released.”
Ivy said, “We’ll see.”
Richie thought, “Uncle.”
Loretta said, preening just a bit, “Yes, we’ll see.”
On the way home, Richie and Ivy agreed, no more Michael and Loretta until at least the end of January.
1981
CHARLIE WAS READING a book. He was sitting up in his bed with his back against the headboard, knees drawn up, quilt to his waist. All he had on was a T-shirt from camp that was ripped at the collar, but even though it was zero degrees out and Mom had turned down the heat for the night, he was not cold. It was three-fifteen by the clock, and he was on page 477. There were about 150 pages left to go. Charlie had stayed up over the years to watch movies, drive around, TP Ricky Horan’s house, talk to Leslie Gage on the phone, and listen to rock and roll turned very low, but he had never stayed up to read a book. Even while he was following the story with joy and pleasure, he was also rather amazed at himself.
He had found the book lying on the street outside of Kroger’s. He took it home, hid it in his room so that Mom would not make a big deal over him finally reading a book, then opened it idly, noted the print was small. The first sentence made no sense at all, but he laughed at the second, “The governess was always getting muddled with her astrolabe, and when she got specially muddled she would take it out on the Wart by rapping his knuckles.” He half understood this when he realized that the Wart was a child, not a blemish. It took him half an hour to read the first two pages, they were so strange. But he saw that they were meant to be strange, and he felt like the author was making a puzzle for him — this many words I will give you to understand, this many words I will keep for myself, and then there are these words in the middle, which you can have if you work at it. Things popped out of the page and into his head, and he pictured them. He went on, although he had only the dimmest idea about Arthur and Gawaine from occasionally looking at Prince Valiant in the Sunday comics. When he got confused by the words, the story stayed in his head, and drew him back.