Thomas McGuane: Nothing but Blue Skies

He let himself in and found that Edward was already there. Edward was wearing a tropical-looking white shirt with short sleeves that hung outside his baggy cotton slacks. His shock of brown hair stood up from the center of his head like a cockscomb. He rushed up to Frank and welcomed him with a double-handed handshake and a deep look. Frank found himself suddenly shy. A sissy smile bloomed on his lips, and incomprehension expressed as a little puff of air through his nose. He felt a gust of overpowering conventionalism. He wished to look past the insulting horrors of his situation and be well bred in every way.

Edward abruptly left the room. Against the wall were several old brown folding chairs with white stenciled codes on their backs. Frank took it upon himself to set two of them out. They were of some patented design, and at first he couldn’t figure out how to get them open. He tried to think of a proper arrangement for them, then gave up, placing them across from each other. He looked at the tall, double-paned windows that revealed the trees and sky, and he longed to fly away; in fact, sitting down in one of the chairs he had unsuccessfully tried to arrange, he escaped into thoughts of migrating birds, wheeling southbound flocks gazing down at the gentle curves of the planet.

Then Edward returned. “Shall I get a pitcher of water and some glasses?” he asked.

“No. In fact, I’ve got to use the bathroom before we have our talk.”

Frank locked the bathroom door and stood for a long time looking at his face in the mirror. He couldn’t understand why he was going to enter into what would have to be a grotesque discussion. Not so long ago, he could have done one of several drugs and come out filled with wit and leadership, an overview even. Without any expression at all, he projected all sorts of histories and motives on this bland face. In one story, he was an extra playing a youthful tar in Wake of the Red Witch; in another, he was Lincoln freeing the slaves. He went back out into the hall, then into a kitchenette with its Mr. Coffee and paper towels and under-the-counter refrigerator. He made up a pitcher of ice water and found two glasses. He placed these on a tray and returned with dread to the meeting room.

For some reason, just now, he feared that his covenant with Gracie had run out of time. Frank’s romantic streak never accounted for time. When he was a boy, a sparrow sang at his window every morning for a whole summer, but it always quit at exactly eight forty-five. His father had said it was nothing but a union sparrow. Frank wanted that bird to sing without reference to time. Maybe he could face that his life with Gracie had just been time-bound and now it was her fate to be a moving target. Still, it was hard not to feel that they were trapped by other people and situations. It was hard not to look for something to blame because the stakes were so ominous.

Edward said, “I think that it is important that we try to be orderly about this. I have to tell you my story, Frank. Let me just get on with it. When I was up at the college museum, designing the Trail of Tears exhibit —”

“Wait a minute,” said Frank, “I’m lost. What do you do?”

“I’m an anthropologist,” said Edward. “That’s my first love. Which doesn’t pay so great. Which is why I have gone into other things.”

“Oh. And what’s this thing you were designing?”

“An exhibit for the museum showing the retreat from Nebraska of the Northern Cheyenne Indians. It’s a gold-plated consciousness raiser if ever there was one, and we had a grant to do it up right, no short cuts and no compromises. We built almost full-size models of one of their typical camps, with a big blue sky overhead, a real firmament, and a religious feel to everything that would help us sense that this was a holy story, which of course it was. We needed models for some of the life-size sculptures of the Indians. These we found very easily from among the Native American students at the college.” Edward was settling into his amiable narrative. “And I put up a little notice in the health food store for a well-preserved fortyish woman with dark complexion and hair.”

Frank felt panic sweep over him. “And Gracie answered the ad?” he asked.

“Gracie answered the ad. Look, we just have to get the facts. We don’t need to drag this out. But Gracie arrived in the evening while I was bolting together a sagebrush. And one thing led to another.”

“In the museum?” Frank cried. “One thing led to another!”

“Well, not just baldly in the museum. In … one of the historical reconstructions of an Indian dwelling.”

An image of the dwelling seemed to scorch Frank’s mind. “My wife? In a fake tepee?”

Edward seemed to try politely to take in all this turmoil. “That’s one way of putting it, Frank.”

Frank just held his face and moaned. With unwelcome irony, he reflected that Edward wasn’t just whistling Dixie when he said “Trail of Tears.” He wished for details yet found himself repelled. The alternation of these impulses was maddening.

His first thought was that it was now final that he could never feel the same about her again. This was sort of an assertion. Another desperate assertion was that he would never feel the same about anthropologists or museums or Indians; and as for tepees, anything that even remotely suggested their conical shape would be too much to contemplate. He was plunging into an unbearable misery. For one acute wave, he thought his limbs would fly off in agony.

“How did you ever find out Gracie was seeing me?” Edward asked.

Well, of course it was a good question. Frank had found out, hadn’t he? “Gracie told me.”

“Why?”

“I was suspicious,” Frank said. Really, who else could he tell this to? He remembered Gracie weeping, remembered all their tears. What was this ghastly need to say all this? It felt disgraceful. Maybe disgrace was more comfortable than holding it in. “I always loved to fish. I fished with my father. I fished with my daughter. I pleaded with Gracie to fish with me.” Frank leaned forward in his folding chair and looked into the middle distance. He wanted to see a healthy outdoorsman out there, insouciant, above the fray, but he saw a big sap instead. “One day she said she was going to learn how to fish, but she didn’t want me standing over her, telling her what to do. Okay, so I don’t stand over her and tell her what to do. I was really happy about that. I mean, how far is minding your own business from abdication? I thought, We could fish together. We could go to New Zealand and catch lunkers together under the Southern Cross. To me, this presents a very romantic picture.”

In his agony, Frank leaned farther forward and the folding chair snapped shut on his buttocks, propelling him onto his knees, the chair retaining its grip like an alligator. He struggled to his feet, reopened the chair and sat down again. Resisting a keening tone, he addressed his remarks to Edward, as though he were entitled to an explanation of this chain of events. “She left the house several times a week with her rod and reel, waders and tackle vest. I wanted to go with her but she wouldn’t let me. Which makes me, what, a nice guy? an asshole? Do they have a book on this? It went on for months. She said she was improving but she wasn’t ready. She was improving. She wasn’t ready. So far, so good. When I told my friend June that Gracie was fishing, June said, ‘So, that’s what she’s calling it.’ Finally, the season was almost over. I absolutely insisted on going with her. I got my tackle together. We drove to the Madison, a spot I have there, a great spot where two channels come together, a long gravel bar with willows along its banks —”

He could see that he didn’t need this much detail. It was as if he were making sure Edward caught lots of fish. “I parked the car and watched Gracie get her stuff together. It became pretty obvious that she didn’t know what she was doing. She didn’t know how to put the reel on the rod, or the line through the guides, or tie on a fly, or anything. She knew absolutely nothing about fishing! I looked at her waders. They had never been in the water. Suddenly, I had this stab, this recognition, that she was up to no good. I was silent. She must have known I saw through this. I kept thinking: we’re middle-aged, we’re pathetic, this shouldn’t be the occasion for a lot of accusations. But I had to know.” He paused and blew his nose. “So I asked her.”