Free A Thousand Acres: A Novel by Jane Smiley Page B

but I still want to do something special. Something that would scandalize Daddy. Just to mark the occasion.”
    “I don’t think there are any male strippers in Mason City.”
    “Did you see that on Phil Donahue?” Rose grinned.
    “Last Wednesday? Where they were wearing about three square inches of shiny blue underwear?”
    “The one guy was in black.”
    “The blond guy.”
    “I didn’t know you were watching that. I was kind of embarrassed to be having it on.”
    “I turned off the picture and listened to the sound, like it was on the radio.”
    “You did not!”
    “You’re right,” I said. “I watched every minute, even after they had their clothes on.”
    Rose laughed giddily, then exclaimed, “There’s a whorehouse in Mason City, did you know that? Pete told me. It’s next door to the Golden Corral. There’s the USDA office on one side and the whorehouse on the other.”
    “How does Pete know?”
    “Those guys he hired to help him paint the barn last summer told him.”
    We paused in front of Lundberg’s and gazed at the dresses. Rose said, “But we don’t have to go that far just to scandalize Daddy. I think shopping would actually do the trick.”
    “What a relief.”
    We went in. It was not lost on me that Rose hadn’t bought anything to wear since the diagnosis, had possibly not paused for very long in front of a mirror since that time. I concentrated on a rack of blouses, trying to relax the vigilance that kept asserting itself—attention to what sizes she was looking at, what sort of cut she was attracted to; whatever dress she chose to try on first, I wanted it to be flattering. When she took her limit, four, into the dressing room, I lingered outside, looking distractedly at some sweaters. She was in there for a long time, and at one point she said, quietly, “I see your feet,” so I had to move off. When she came out, she was subdued again. She handed the dresses to the saleslady with a smile and moved toward the door. I pretended to rummage through some belts, but when she went out into the street, I followed her.
    We looked in the next shop window, a shoe store, and the next, the five-and-ten. She stared for a long time at the cold-mist humidifiers. I said, “You heard from Caroline?”
    “No.”
    “Who do you think’s going to make the first move?”
    She turned and looked at me, raising her hand to shade her eyes from the sunlight. “Has Daddy ever made a first move? I mean in a reconciliatory way?”
    “Well, no. But that’s with us. This is with Caroline.”
    “When water runs uphill is when he’ll make a first move.”
    “You’d think she’d be more careful.”
    Rose started walking again. “She doesn’t have to be careful. She’s got an income. Being his daughter is all pretty abstract for her, and I’m sure she wants to keep it that way. Mark my words. She and Frank will get married and produce a son and there’ll be a lot of coming together around that. She always does what she has to do.”
    “You sound annoyed with her, too. She was coming up the steps. It was Daddy who slammed the door.”
    “But there didn’t have to be any production at all, no breach, no reconciliation, no drama. She just can’t stand to be one of us, that’s the key. Haven’t you ever noticed? When we go along, she balks. When we resist, she’s sweet as pie.”
    “Maybe.”
    “Shit! I remember when she was all of about five years old—beforeMommy died, at any rate. I was sitting at the kitchen table doing homework, and Mommy was cooking dinner and Caroline was coloring, and she looked at each of us and said right out, ‘When I grow up, I’m not going to be a farmwife.’ So Mommy laughed and asked her what she was going to be, and she said, ‘A farmer.’ ”
    I laughed. We walked on, agreeing wordlessly to avoid the subject of Caroline. My stomach growled. I said, “Rosie, let’s eat at Golden Corral and see if we can get a look at what the prostitutes wear to