Richard Ford - Let Me Be Frank With You

“How did your family come to live here?” I said. Would I ask a white person that? (“Dad moved us all out here from Peoria in ’58, and we had a heckuva time at first…”) For most questions there’s an answer.

“Oh, well,” Ms. Pines said from the foyer, “my father grew up in Haddam. On Clio Street.” She ventured a step nearer into the hall. “That’s the muse of history.”

“Come sit down,” I said and popped up, pushing a second wire-back café chair — Sally’s — away from the table for her to occupy.

She came toward me, looking left, then right, assessing what we’d done to the hall and the kitchen and the breakfast sunroom. New therma-panes where there’d been gunked patio doors. Green, replica Mexican tiles. A prior owner had “opened out the kitchen” twenty years ago, then moved away to Bernardsville.

“It’s all very nice,” Ms. Pines said, looking over-dressed now in her red Christmas coat and mistletoe topper. Her presence was like having a census taker visit and surprisingly become your friend.

“I’ve got some coffee made.”

Ms. Pines was still looking around the sunroom, her eyes stopping on my cherished, framed Block Island map. “Where’s that?” she said, furrowing a brow, as if the map was a problem.

“Block Island,” I said. “I went there years ago. It’s in Rhode Island, which most people don’t know.” Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz.

“I see.” She set her big purse on the floor and seated herself primly in the café chair.

“Take off your coat,” I said. “It’s warm.” Sally, lifetime Chicagoan, is always cold.

“Thank you.” She unbuttoned her red coat to reveal a green, wool two-piece suit sporting good-sized gold buttons and a Peter Pan collar. Pricey but stylish, and right for a woman of her vintage. With her coat off, her left arm also revealed the blunt end of a cumbersome white-plaster cast above her black gloved hand. “I have this wound to contend with.” She frowned at the cast’s bulk.

“How’d you manage that?” I set a yellow mug of coffee down, the sugar bowl, milk caddy, and a spoon. Old Rose was in the air again, not all that agreeable with the coffee aroma. She removed her other glove and laid it on the table.

“I’m a hurricane victim,” she said, arranging both her hands, cast and all, on the glass table surface. She said hurricane to sound like “hair-a-cun,” then inhaled a considerable breath, which she let out slowly. I all at once sensed I was about to hear an appeal for the Mount Pisgah cemetery maintenance fund, or some Nationalist Chinese outreach. “My home is in Lavallette,” Ms. Pines said. “We took a pretty considerable beating. I’m lucky I only broke my arm.”

“I’m sorry you did,” I said brightly, wrong about the solicitation. “Is your house intact?”

“It was ruined.” Ms. Pines smiled ruefully at her coffee, deliberately spooning in sugar. “I had a nice condominium.” She made the same “umm-hmmm” sound she’d made on the stairs. The sugar spoon tinkled as she moved it.

No words came out of me. Words can also be the feeblest emissaries for our feelings. Ms. Pines seemed to understand what silence signified.

“I’m back over here because of that,” she said, and lifted her chin as she stirred her coffee, then regarded me in what looked like an unexpected sternness. “I have friends in Haddam. On Gulick Road. They’re putting me up until I can determine what to do.”

“I’m sure you had insurance,” I said, my second, or possibly third, idiotic remark in five minutes.

“Everyone had insurance.” Ms. Pines right-handedly brought her coffee to her lips. I’d forgotten a napkin and jumped up, snatched a paper one out of the kitchen holder, and set it beside her spoon. “We just don’t know,” she said, setting her mug onto the napkin. “Haddam CC 4-Ball” was printed on it — a memento of my former wife, Ann, from long, long ago.

“Do you have a family?” I said.

“I had a husband,” Ms. Pines said. “We separated in ’01. He passed on in ’04. I kept our apartment. He was a police sergeant.”

“I see.” I’m deeply sorry wouldn’t have worked any better than Oh, great, that’s perfect. He’s out of the way. And you’re still damn good looking . Words.

“I teach high school in Wall Township,” Ms. Pines said, dabbing her lips. “We shut school down after the storm. Which isn’t the worst thing that could happen to me under these circumstances.” She regarded her busted-arm cast. “Our students are in limbo, of course. We’ll have to make provisions for them after Christmas.” She smiled at me with grim Christmas-no-cheer and took another sip of coffee.

“What do you teach?” I said, across the table. Snow had ceased in my small back yard, leaving the air mealy gray. A pair of enormous, self-important crows had arrived to scrounge in the pachysandra below the suet feeder.

“History,” Ms. Pines said. “I’m a Barnard grad. From ’76. The bicentennial year.”

“That’s great,” I said. “My daughter almost went there.”

Another silence invoked itself. I could’ve told her I’d gone to Michigan, have two children, an ex-wife and a current one, that I’d sold real estate here and at The Shore for twenty years, once wrote a book, served in an undistinguished fashion in the marines, and was born in Mississippi — bangety, bangety, bangety, boop. Or I could let silence do its sovereign work, and see if something of more material import opened up. It would be a loss if some hopeful topic couldn’t now be broached, given all. Nothing intimate, sensitive, or soul-baring. Nothing about the world becoming a better place. But something any two citizens could talk about, any ole time, to mutual profit — our perplexing races notwithstanding.

“You said your father grew up here?” I smiled what must’ve been a loony smile, but a signal of where our conversation might veer if we let it.

“He did. Yes,” Ms. Pines said and cleared her throat formally. “He was the first of his family to attend college. He played football at Rutgers. In the ’50s. He did extremely well. Studied engineering. Took his doctorate. He became the first Negro to work at a high level at Bell Laboratories. He was an audio specialist. He was very smart.”

“Like Paul Robeson,” I blurted — in spite of every living cell urging me not to say “Like Paul Robeson.”

“Um-hm,” Ms. Pines said, uninterested in Paul Robeson. “Some people are better as ideas than as humans, Mr. Bascombe. My father was that sort of man. I think he thought of himself as an idea more than as a man. Our race suffers from that.”

“So does ours,” I said, glad to see Paul Robeson drift off downstream.

“We lived in this house,” Ms. Pines said, “from 1959 to 1969. My father insisted on living in a white neighborhood. Though it didn’t work out very well.”

“Did your mother not like it?” Why would I assume that?

“Yes. My mother was an opera singer. Or would’ve been. She was out of place wherever she was. She was Italian. She preferred New York — where she was from. I was the only one of us who truly liked it in Haddam. I loved going to school. My brother didn’t have an easy time.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Well.” Ms. Pines looked away out the sliding door, where the crows were standing atop the melting snow-crust gawking in at us through the window. “I considered calling you before I came.”

“Why?” I said, smiley, smiley, smiley.

“I was nervous. Because if you knew who I was — or am — possibly you wouldn’t have liked me to come.”

“Why?” I said. “I’m glad you came.”

“Well. That’s kind.”