Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“Sure am. Realty-Wise. You want to buy a house on the ocean? I’ll sell you one.”

“Oh yeah, I just gotta get these citizens over here to quit killing each other, then I’ll be over with you.”

“That’s a tall order but a noble quest, Detective.”

“It’s changed, Mr. Bascombe. It’s a big difference than when you lived over here.”

Just as I thought! He knows all about me. My life’s displayed on his green screen. My mother’s maiden name, my freshman GPA, my blood pressure, my tire pressure, my Visa balance and sexual preference. Probably he can see when I’m scheduled to die.

“People get rich, they get upset a lot easier. They keep me hoppin’, I’ll tell you that. Homicide rate’s inchin’ up in Delaware County. You don’t hear about it. But I hear about it.”

“Is your family together for Thanksgiving?”

“Oh, well. I’m workin’, ain’t I? Let’s don’t go down that road. You just have a good one.”

“It’s always complex.”

“Whew. You got that right. Thanks for your cooperation, Mr. Bascombe. We’ll be contacting you about tomorrow.” And click, Marinara’s gone, sucked into a computer dot just as I hear my son outside shout out, “He who smelt it, dealt it. That’s all I know.” It’s hard to know what he’s talking about, but my guess is the election.

I called last night,” Ann Dykstra-Bascombe-Dykstra-O’Dell-Dykstra says before I can say it’s me. I’ve called her cell. Where is she? In an underwear boutique at the Quaker Bridge Mall? On the 18th at HCC? In the can? You have no control over where your personal private voice is being heard, what audience it’s being piped into, who’s lying about who’s where. It’s an intrusion but isn’t quite. I was ordering two cubic yards of pea gravel at the Garden Emporium in Toms River last week, and the customer beside me at the register was blabbing away, “Listen, sweetheart, I’ve never been so in love with anybody in my whole fucking life. So just say yes, okay? Tell that imbecile to go fuck himself. We can be on Air Mexico to Puerto Vallarta at ten o’clock tonight—”

“We need to talk about some things, Frank,” Ann says in a disciplined voice. “Did you just elect to not call me last night?”

“This is calling you. I wasn’t home last night. I was busy.” Sleeping in my car. I’ve now showered and shaved and positioned myself, in my plaid terry-cloth robe and fleece mukluks, in as steadfast a sitting position as possible at my desk, coccyx flush to the chair back, feet flat to the floor, knees apart but nervous, breath regulated. It is the posture for hearing disappointing biopsy reports, offer turn-downs and “Someone’s been badly injured” calls. It’s also the posture for delivering bad news.

Yet I’m already on the defensive. My toes curl in my mukluks; my sphincter reefs in. And I’m the delivering party: Don’t come here today. Or ever. My heart thumps as if I’d sprinted up a fire escape to get here. Ann has perfected the skill of making me feel this way. It’s her golfer’s inner meritoriousness. I’m forever the hunch-shouldered, grinning census taker at the door; she, the one living the genuine life. I have my questionnaire and my stubby pencil but will never know what reality — the one behind her, within the complex rooms — is all about. Hers is the voice of reasoned experience, sturdy values, good instincts and correct outlook (no matter how conventional); I am outside the threshold, the regretted one in need of sobering lessons. It’s why she could turn away from me seventeen years ago and never (until now) look back. Because she was right, right, right. It’s amazing I don’t hate her guts.

“I think Gore should concede, don’t you?”

“No.”

“Well. He should. He’s a sap. The market’ll go crazy if he wins.” Sap. The all-around Michigan term of disparagement. Her father characterized me as a sap when Ann and I were dating. “Where’d you find that sap?” Its sound twists a tighter knot in my gut. No one ever gets called a sap without feeling he probably is one.

“He may be a sap, but the other guy’s unmentionably stupid.” I can’t actually mention the other guy’s name.

“What did John Stuart Mill say?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say it was better to have a stupid President.”

“Better to have a happy, unmentionable pig than a something, something something.”

“That’s not what he said.” And it’s not what I want to talk about. Mill would’ve supported Gore and the whole ticket and feel betrayed just like I do.

“Have you talked to Paul?” She is progressing down a checklist.

“No. He’s out on the beach right now, digging a grave for his time capsule. I haven’t talked to Jill, either.”

“Well, she’s interesting. She’s different.” I hear Paul laugh again, then shout, “G’day, mate.” Possibly Mr. Oshi has freed himself.

“Listen,” I say. “About today. I mean this afternoon.”

Dense silence. Different from the galactic dead space Detective Marinara receded into. This silence of Ann’s is the silence known only to divorced people — the silence of making familiar but unwelcome adjustments to evidence of continued bad character, of second-tier betrayals, unreasonable requests, late excuses, heart stabbings that must be withstood but are better defeated in advance. It’s what communication becomes between the insufficiently loved. “I’m not coming,” Ann says, seemingly without emotion. It’s the same voice she’d use to cancel a hair appointment. “I think we are who we are, Frank.”

“Yeah. I sure am.”

“Since Charley died, I’ve had this feeling of something about to happen. I was waiting for something. Moving down from Connecticut seemed to be getting close to it. But I don’t think I thought it was you.” I am entombed in the silence she was just entombed in. Now comes revised testimony (including Charley’s) of my foul, corrupt and unacceptable nature. I wonder if she’s pacing her living room like an executive or sitting on a bench with her clubs, awaiting her tee time, while she dispenses with me again. “But then you got sick.”

“I wasn’t sick. Not sick sick. I had prostate cancer. Have. That’s not sick.” It’s just fatal. SBD. I’m still the census taker, weakened by illness but still in need of reproval and some lessons.

“I know,” Ann says officiously. I hear her footsteps on a hard floor surface. “Anyway, I didn’t really think it was you.”

“I get it.” A stack of mail’s on my desktop under my Realtor of the Year paperweight. It’s unopened since Tuesday — a measure of my distraction, since I’m usually eager to read the mail, even if it’s steak-knife catalogs or a pre-approved platinum-club membership. I don’t think I’m going to be allowed to say what I want to say, which is all right. “What do you think it was? Or who?” I’m staring at the cover of the AARP magazine — a full-color (staged) photograph showing a silver-haired gent lying on a city street looking dead, but being worked on by heavy-suited firemen in fireman hats, equipped with oxygen cylinders, defibrillator paddles, with intubation paraphernalia standing at the ready. A silver-haired old lady in an electric blue pantsuit looks on, horrified. The headline reads RISK. WILL THERE BE TIME?

“Gee, I don’t know,” Ann says. “It’s strange.”

“Maybe you missed Charley. Didn’t you meet him at Haddam CC? Maybe you thought you’d find him again.” No use mentioning her thoughts of the seminary.

“You didn’t like Charley. I understand that. But I did. You were jealous of him. But he was a fine man.”—In death, and when he thought my name was Mert. “He was the love of my life. You don’t like hearing that. You’re not a very good judge of people.” Whip. Crack. Pow! But I’m ready for it. The slow-rhythm meticulousness of Ann’s rhetorical style is always an indicator that I’m coming in for a direct hit. All bad roads lead to Frank. We have, of course, never talked about Sally — my wife — in the entire eight years I’ve been married to her. Now might be the optimum moment to set me straight about that misstep, since it’s led me where it’s led me: to this conversation. I’m not surprised to learn that I don’t win the “love of my life” gold medal. Except in rogue bands of lower primates, you don’t abandon the love of your life. Death has to intervene.