Richard Ford - Let Me Be Frank With You

“I’m here,” I said tentatively.

“He’s on! I got him. Okay!” Whoever owned the funereal voice — a male nurse, a hospice worker, a “companion”—also said “Okay,” from the background.

“When’re you coming over here?” Eddie shouted. “You better hurry up. I’m hearing bells.”

Not that far away on Hoving Road, Eddie was hearing the same bells I was hearing in my kitchen — the carillon at St. Leo the Great RC, gonging out Angels we have heard on-high, sweetly singing o’er the plain.. .

“Well… Look. Eddie…” I tried to say.

“Why didn’t you call me back, you jackass?” Cough. Groan. Organ deep “Uuuhooo wow. Jesus.”

“I am calling back,” I said, irritably. “This is calling back. I’m doing it. I was busy.” Boomp-boomp-boomp.

“I’m busy, too,” Eddie said. “Busy getting dead. If you want to catch me live, you better get over here. Maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you’re that kind of chickenshit. Pancreatic cancer’s gone to my lungs and belly. I’m not catching, though…”

“I’ll…”

“It is goddamn efficient. I’ll say that. They knew how to make cancer when they made this shit. Two months ago I was fine. I haven’t seen you in a long time, Frank. Where the hell have you been?” Cough, wheeze. “Uuuhooo,” again.

The mellow male voice said, “Just ease back, Eddie.”

“Okay. Owwww! That goddamn hurts. Owww. OWWW!” Something was crunching against the speaker like Christmas foil. “What’re you trying to do to me… Frank? Are you coming?”

“I’m…” Eddie was way too much of a tryer , I saw — the way he always was. I never really liked him, agreement or no agreement.

“I’m what? I’m an asshole? Grant a dying man his wish, Frank. Is that too much for you? I guess it is. Jesus.”

“Okay. I’ll come,” I said quickly — trapped, miserable. “Sit tight, Eddie.”

“Sit tight?” Cough. “Okay. I’ll sit tight. I can do that.”

The soft voice again, “That’s good, Eddie. Just…” Then the line was empty between us. I was alone and breathless — in my kitchen. A pronged filament of golden sunlight passed through the chilled window from the back yard, brightened the dark countertop in front of me. My heart was still rocketing, my hand clutching the receiver out of which someone had just been speaking to me and now was gone. Too fast. Reluctance to acquiescence. I hadn’t meant it to come out this way. Possibly I didn’t have enough to do. I needed to find strategies to avoid such moments as this.

A WITTERING URGENCY HAS COMMANDEERED MY DAY and self. Plans I might’ve had have gone a-flutter. Packing for my Christmas Day trip to KC is postponed. Practice, which I do for reading-to-the-blind, is now put off ’til later (I’m reading Naipaul — always tricky). I know I’ve claimed to leave 60 percent of available hours for the unexpected — a galvanizing call to beneficent action, in this case. But what I mostly want to do is nothing I don’t want to do.

Still, in thirty minutes, I’m out the door, to my car and the moist, milky winter-warm morning. A big L-10 is just whistling over — so low I can almost see tiny faces peering down, quizzical, as New Jersey’s middle plain rises to greet them. On our rare ocean-wind days, the Newark approaches shift westward, and the in-bounds from Paris and Djibouti lumber in at tree tops, so that we might as well live in Elizabeth. The current warm snap also denotes new weather moving across from Ohio, readying a jolly white Christmas for wise stay-at-homes, though a nightmare for the imprudent — me — flying on Christmas Day, using miles.

My Christmas-trip idea, in its first positive iteration, was for a festive family fly-in to ole San Antone (my life-long dream is to visit the Alamo — proud monument to epic defeat and epic resilience), all bankrolled by me, including a stay at the Omni, an early-season Spurs’ game, capped off by a big Christmas almuerzo at the best “real Mexican” joint money could buy — La Fogata, on Vance (I did my research). Others could then wander the River Walk and do as others wanted, while Sally and I took a driving trip up to the Pedernales and the LBJ shrines — locales of dense generational interest and meaning; then backtrack through Austin so I could see the Charles Whitman Tower from sixty-six, then be climbing onto Southwest by the twenty-eighth, headed home to the Garden State.

None of which worked out. Sally decided the grievers of South Mantoloking needed her “at this critical holiday season” more than I did. Clarissa, in Scottsdale, is currently having “issues” with her brother, who means to expand his garden-supply business to include a rent-to-own outlet in the building next door — which she and I oppose. They’re not talking. In the face of our opposition, Paul has declared the Alamo (the “à la mode” in his parlance) to be an historical bad joke and waste of time and blood, and that no one should ever enter Texas in the first place. Instead, he’s insisted I come to KC, where he can grill me about his rent-to-own theories. Not very appealing, to be honest. Though it’s what I’ve decided, since there are days (which must be true for all fathers) when I badly miss my surviving son — as strange a man as he is and will be. Plus, I don’t want to be home alone on Christmas.

I am, though, questioning my wisdom this morning — with the possibility of a weather lockdown at Newark and snow up to my butt. In the world today, no one should experience a wittering urgency without knowing there’s a cause somewhere close by, even if you can’t see it.

My Wilson Lane neighborhood, as I drive down to the Choir College and turn toward Haddam’s west end, is a far cry from the days when I flogged houses here and my kids were young. Although the casual observer might not notice much has been altered.

Most of the small, frame, President-streets houses, on their manageable fifty-foot lots, look as they have since the boomer ’90s. Though residential stock has slowly begun passing into less confident hands — the banks, absentee owners, weekenders from Gotham, and property managements. They mostly keep things ship-shape, but not as if every owner lived in every abode the way they used to.

And more change is already in evidence. A code variance for a chiropractor. A single-hand lawyer’s-office conversion where a widow recently lived and died. A holistic wellness center with Pilates and Reiki gurus inside. An online travel agent and copy shop. Following which, it’s a quick descent to a head shop, a T-shirt emporium, a RadioShack, and a tattoo/nail salon. Mixed use — the end of life as we know it. Though my bet is I’ll be in my resting place before that bad day dawns. If there’s a spirit of one-ness in my b. ’45 generation, it’s that we all plan to be dead before the big shit train finds the station.

In the eight years since Sally and I arrived back from Sea-Clift, we haven’t much become acquainted with our neighbors. Very little gabbing over the fence to share a humorous “W” story. Few if any spontaneous invitations in for a Heineken. No Super Bowl parties, potlucks, or house-warmings. Next door might be a Manhattan Project pioneer, Tolstoy’s granddaughter, or John Wayne Gacy. But you’d hardly know it, and no one seems interested. Neighbors are another vestige of a bygone time. All of which I’m fine with.

However, just after Thanksgiving, a month ago, I found a letter in my mailbox, hand-addressed in pencil to RESIDENT. On a sheet of coarse, lined, drugstore bond, in block letters was a message that said, “Sir or Madame. My name is Reginald P. Oakes. I was convicted of carnal knowledge of a juvenile in 2010. I now reside at 28 Cleveland Street, Haddam, New Jersey. 085_.”