Richard Ford - Let Me Be Frank With You

“Did you come home and find them?” Hoping not, not, not. I was full of hope now.

“No,” Ms. Pines said. “I would never have survived that. I would’ve had to be committed. The neighbor next door heard the two earlier gun reports and almost called the police. But when he heard another report an hour on, he did call them. Someone came to the school for me. I never actually saw any of them. I wasn’t permitted to.”

“Who took care of you? How old were you?”

“About to turn seventeen,” Ms. Pines said. “I went to stay with the debate-club sponsor that night. And after that my father’s relatives came into the picture — though not for very long. They didn’t know me or what to do with me. The school, Haddam High School — the guidance counselors and the principal and two of my teachers — made a special plea on my behalf to be admitted midyear to the Cromwell-Aimes Academy in Maynooth, New Hampshire. A local donor was found. I was made a ward of our debate-club sponsor and lived with her family until I started Barnard. Which saved my life. These are the people I’m staying with. Their children.”

Ms. Pines lowered her soft chin and stared at her lap, where her un-injured hand held her injured one in its grasp. Her green tam held its perch. A thin aroma of Old Rose escaped from somewhere. I heard her breathe, then emit a sorrowing sigh. Her posture was of someone expecting a blow. (Where was I when all this mayhem transpired? Happy on Perry Street in Greenwich Village, as worry-free as a guppy, high on the town every night, in love-and-lust with a canny, big-boned, skeptical Michigan girl, and trying my hand at the “longer form” for which I had no talent. Living the life of the not-yet-wounded. Though why didn’t I finally hear about all this? I was a realtor. Towns keep secrets.)

“Does it seem beneficial to come back now?” I am muted, grief counselor-ish, skipping over twelve consolatory, contradictorily inadequate expressions of what? Empathy more complex than words can muster? Grief more dense than hearts can bear? I’ve never sought the services of a grief counselor. A dwindling group of us still holds out. Though from Sally I know what the basic mission entails: first — avoidance of the plumb-dumb obvious; second — the utterance of one intelligent statement per five-minute interval; third — simple patience. It’s not that difficult to counsel the grieving. I could’ve said, “Roosevelt was a far better choice than Willkie back in ’40.” Which would be as grief neutralizing as “What a friend we have in Jesus,” or “Mercy, I can’t tell you how bad I feel about your loss.”

But was it actual grief? The spectacle-grim-oddness of the whole bewilderment might require an entirely new emotion — a fresh phylum of feeling, matched by a new species of lingo.

“Yes, I think it is,” Ms. Pines said softly, relative to my house and being in it and its helping. “I was never allowed back as a girl. I left for debate club that day, then nothing was ever again as it had been. You don’t think things like that can happen. Then you find out they both can and will. So, yes. It’s revealing to come here. Thank you.” Ms. Pines smiled at me almost grudgingly. This was the grainy, human, non-race-based contact our President has in mind for us. Too bad the collateral damage has to be so high.

I knew Ms. Pines was now searching for departing words. She was too savvy to deal off the “c” card — abominable closure . She was seeking she knew not what, and would know she’d found it, only afterward. If she could’ve framed a question for me, it would’ve been the age-old one: What should I now do? How should I go on with the rest of my life now that I’ve experienced all this? Natural disaster is adept at provoking that very question. Though why ask me? Of course she hadn’t.

“Umm-hmm,” Ms. Pines was heard to “say,” having recovered from the brief séance she’d induced in herself, in my house, in me. She was ready to go — spryly up and out of her café chair, big patent purse swagged in her un-injured hand, a flattening-neatening pat given to secure her tam. She looked down to her green suit front, as if it might’ve been littered with something. I wasn’t at all ready for her to leave. There could be more to say, some of it never said before. How often does that happen? Still, I jumped up and grabbed her coat. She’d performed and received what she came for, relegated as much of her burden as possible to the house. And to me. Su casa es mi casa.

“Many times I thought of killing myself, Mr. Bascombe. Very many. I wasn’t brave enough. That’s how it felt.” She turned and let me help her coat on, careful with her hurricane-damaged wrist. I handed over her gloves. “Maybe I had something else yet to do.”

“You did,” I said. “You do.”

“Umm-hmm,” Ms. Pines said.

Another zephyr of Old Rose passed my nostrils. I patted her cashmere shoulder the way you’d pat a pony. She acknowledged me with a confident look — the way a pony might. It’s a solid gain to experience significant life events for which no words or obvious gestures apply. Awkward silence can be perfect. The whisper of the gods, Emerson says.

“I read, Mr. Bascombe — I think it was in Time …” Ms. Pines was leading me toward my front door, past the murderous basement, as if she’d neutralized it. “It said there’s a rise in world corruption now. Everyone’s taking bribes. Narcissism’s on the increase. We’re twenty-third in happiness in America. Bhutan is first, apparently. Somebody said there’s been a systematic extermination of joy in the United States.” Her green-topped head was bobbing in front of me. I couldn’t see her pretty face. “Isn’t that something?”

“I read that.” I had. “It was some gloomy Eastern European in a smelly suit. Those guys don’t like anything.”

“Exactly.” Ms. Pines turned to me, restored to who she’d been, possibly better. She smiled — confident, self-aware — and extended her small, chestnut hand for me to shake. I gently did.

Out through my front door’s sidelights, where there was no longer snow falling, I glimpsed across Wilson Lane the Bitticks’ frosted front lawn. A short, round white woman in a quilted coat and quilted boots was hammering a GOOD BUY REALTY “FOR SALE — NEW PRICE” sign into the stiff grass — the equivalent of a buzzard landing in your yard. Fresh realities had dawned there, a grainier view of the situation (bank push-back, almost certainly). Mack had taken down his Romney-Ryan poster, just today, and struck his flag. New neighbors would be arriving (a Democrat, if I had a choice; married, no kids, earnest souls I’d be happy to wave to on my morning trip out for the paper, but not much more. I ask less of where I live than I used to).

“Do you find it hard to be here, Mr. Bascombe?” Ms. Pines said as I opened the front door for her. The air space between the storm and the coffered oak door was still and chilly. “You lived in Haddam prior to now, I know. I know some things about you. I kept up with who subsequent owners were, after we left. It’s what I could do.”

The round woman driving the GOOD BUY sign into the Bitticks’ yard stopped and looked our way: two people, a man and a woman, talking about… what? A new job as a housekeeper? An FBI reference check on a neighbor in line for a government job? Not a family tragedy of epic proportion, requiring years to face, impossible to reconcile, with much left to accomplish and not much time to do it.

“No,” I said. “It’s been the easiest thing in the world. Most everyone I knew from before is gone or dead. I don’t make much of an impression on things now — which is satisfying. We just have so much chance to make an impression. It seems fair. It’s the new normal.” I smiled a smile I hoped would be one of mutual understanding — what I hadn’t had words for before, but believed we felt together.