Richard Ford - Let Me Be Frank With You

“Hi,” a smiling refrigerator of a woman in a large green sports coat says (to me). She is suddenly, unexpectedly, extremely present just as I’m halfway past the big tree piled around with phony gifts, heading for the entry of the Beth Wessel. Hot-diggity, dog-diggity, Boom! “Do you have a friend or loved one you’re here to visit?” the refrigerator says, happy, welcoming, vividly glad to see me. She’s wearing beige trousers, a Santa necktie, and form-fitting, black orthopedic shoes that mean she’s on her feet all day and her dogs are probably killing her. She is security — but nothing says so. Though at her size, she could drag the whole, gigantic blazing Christmas tree — assuming it was on fire — all the way to the Great Road by herself. She’s not Asian that I can tell.

I am not known to her. Which means she’s new, or else there’s been a “problem” in the Community — possibly an unwanted “guest”—for which measures have had to be taken. I will not be a problem.

“I do,” I say. I give her my own big smile that wants to say that a whole world of things have happened before she came to work today, and it’s no fault of hers, but I’m a friendly so let me get on with my piddly-ass business — my pillow, etc.

“Who would that be?” she says, as if she can’t wait to find out. Big smile back — bigger than mine. Likely she’s a local phys-ed teacher picking up holiday hours before starting two-a-days with the girls’ hoops squad over in Hightstown. Wide square face. Big laughing comical mouth. Though tiny, suspicious eyes and cell-block hair.

“Ann Dykstra,” I say. “Down in the Wessel.”

“Miss Annie,” she sings, as if the two of them have been friends forever. Conceivably she’s De Tocqueville faculty — Ann’s replacement with the golf squad.

A large man with his back to me, inching nearer the wine and cheese layout — which is not yet all the way set up — is Buck Pusylewski. I can see the Grisham novel and the Dave Garroway horn-rims on top of his head where his greasy hair will smudge them. I’m nervous he’s going to spot me and come over.

“Whatcha got in there ,” the big security woman says. She pokes a finger right into the plastic sleeve of the ortho-pillow, making it crackle.

“Pillow,” I say. “I’m bringing it.”

A big I’m-with-you-on-this-one smile. “A Christmas gift,” she says jovially. Everything makes her happy. People are milling nearer us. Eyes are darting my way. They know who she is. But not me, now. What’s the problem? What’s going on? Who’s he? What’s that? “These are awesome. I’ve got one.” She’s agreeing about the pillow. “They really ease the neck pain.”

“My wife has Parkinson’s.” Though she’s not technically my wife.

“Well, we all know that,” the security amazon says, as if Parkinson’s was a condition anybody would want. “Lemme just give you a little squeeze.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Not you , you old charmer. The pillow. Lemme give her a little poofety-poof.”

Obviously I’m getting no farther without submitting. It’s not usually like this. I offer up the heavier-than-you’d-expect, plastic-encased pillow, which hasn’t been opened since I bought it yesterday at the Bed Bath & Beyond at the Haddam Mall. Unwelcome Indonesian spores perhaps wait inside its factory-sealed sleeve, intent on mayhem. I wouldn’t have one of these things.

The security woman hefts the pillow like a medicine ball, brings it to the side of her big face as if she was listening for something inside — an Uzi or a sarin gas micro-cylinder. She squeezes it like a dog toy. It makes no noise. Most terrorists don’t have ex-wives with Parkinson’s whom they visit once a month. Though who knows?

“O- kay! ” She prinks her eyebrows as if we’re both in on something. She wakes up grinning, is my guess. She has alarmingly large hands. And then of course I catch on — I’m always the last to notice such things. “She’s” not a “she” but a “he.” She’s a Doug who’s become a Doris, an Artie an Amy — now free, thanks to an enlightened electorate, to assume her rightful place in the growing health-care industry, whereas before he was dying inside selling farm machinery in Duluth. My heart goes out to her/him. My life is piffles by comparison. I wish I could make Ann’s pillow a present to big Amy, and head to Sally’s birthday dinner, having done the good deed the season aspires to — instead of the deed I’m destined for.

The big galoot hands me back the pillow as if she’s used to strangers taking just about this long to wise up to the whole gender deal, but is happy to have it copacetic between us now. She used to be me. She knows what that’s all about — not as great as it’s cracked up to be. Otherwise she’d still be there.

“You must be Frank.” Amy-Doris for the first time trades in the bozo grin for a mulling stare, making her look like nothing as much as a farm machinery salesman, only with breasts, lipstick and a beard shadow down her jawline.

“Right,” I say, as if I’m the one in drag. Hot-diggity, dog-diggity…

“Annie talks about you sometimes,” A-D says. Her mulling look means I’ve long ago been determined to be in the wrong about many things, and it’s too late to fix any of them. It’s all just sad, sad, etc. Big Doug was probably a flop selling Caterpillars.

“What does she say?” I can’t keep from asking, though I don’t want to know. Boom! What you do to me!

“She says you’re okay. Sometimes you’re kind of an asshole. But that’s pretty rare.” Doug is just Doug now. We’re hombre-to-hombre. Perhaps his surgery’s not quite done and he’s still in the stage where you wake up not knowing who the hell’s living in your skin.

“That’s probably true,” I say, wedging the pillow back under my elbow. Buck, I see, is treating himself to a glass of the Malbec, getting ahead of when the book-clubbers let out. Possibly he and Miss Annie have plans for later. In the distant public rooms people are applauding. The sounds of pure delight. Granny Bea’s just opened her big present and been surprised as a betsy bug on a cabbage leaf.

“Hard not to be who you are,” big Doug observes, nodding. He should know. She should know.

“I keep trying to do better.”

“Well, you have to.” Big smile again. “You have yourself a merry one, Franky. Knock yourself out.”

“You have one, too.” Franky.

“Oh, I’m on my way to that. Don’t worry about me.” Something cheerlessly sexual’s crept into his/her voice. Though no more than with most things we say, do, think about and long to be true. Poor devil. But I’ve cleared customs now, am free to go. Free to find my way to the genuine woman who once was my wife.

BUCK, BY AN EXCELLENT STROKE, HAS NOT NOTICED me. An encounter with him would zero out my Default Self before it even had its chance. The Beth Wessel corridor, which I now enter, is like a swank hallway in the Carlyle. No hint of infirmity or decline. Nothing wheelchair width, no wall grips, no SOS phones or defibrillator paks. Illness abides elsewhere. The walls are rich, shadowed wainscot and with an aroma of saddle leather, the above-part done in hand-painted murals of the Luxembourg, the Marais, the Seine and the Place des Vosges. Ann’s told me these are all re-done yearly and there’s a competition. Brass sconces add tasteful low-light accents. The carpet’s gray with a green undertone you don’t notice and lush as a sheep meadow. Every few feet there’s a framed, spot-lit photograph — a Doisneau, a Cartier-Bresson, an Atget — or at least their imitators. Sounds are as hushed as deep space. You expect the next person you see to be Meryl Streep in a Mets cap and shades, making a discreet exit out onto a side street off the Boulevard St. Germain — not the Great Road in Haddam Township.