Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“She’s got her big place up in Spring Lake. The kids come. They’re Jewish. It’s a big scene.” Mike nods a sage “not my kind of thing” nod. He’s gone back to talking like a Jerseyite.

But I knew it! A dowager, a late-model divorcée like Marguerite. She’s adopted “little Mike-a-la,” who’s giving her “investment counsel” over and above his unspecified services of a consensual nature. The kids, Jake, a Columbia professor, Ben, a fabric artist on Vinal-haven, and one daughter, Rachel, who lives alone in Montecito and can’t seem to get started. They all keep the zany parent on a frugal budget so she can’t ruin their retirements with her funny enthusiasms. Mike’s “interesting,” a minority, resembles the Dalai Lama — plus, who cares, if he makes “Gram” happy and keeps her away from ballroom dancing. At least he’s not a Mexican.

“Do they let you carve the turkey and serve?” I don’t try to suppress a smirk, which he hates but won’t show. He knows what he’s up to and doesn’t care if I know. It’s business, not a love-based attachment.

“I’ll just drop by late,” he says, and frowns, not at me, but at how he’ll pass the night. He is, as we all are, taking his solaces as they come. “I have the business proposal already written up.” He produces a white Realty-Wise business envelope from his sweater pocket, rolled up with the listing sheets for 118. This he proffers like a summons, bowing slightly. I’m not sure Tibetans even bow. It may be something he picked up. Though I, the defendant, accept it and bow back (which I can’t seem to prevent myself from doing) before folding it and stuffing it in my Levi’s back pocket like junk mail.

“I’ll read this someday. Not today.”

“That’s splendid.” He is elated again. It pleases him to conduct business in the street, in the elements, far from the ancestral cradle. To Mike, this is a sign of progress: the old lessons from the life left behind still viable here in New Jersey.

“Am I going to see you again?” My hand’s on my cold door handle. “I don’t know what you’re doing. I thought you were moving your base of operations over to Mullica Road. You’re a mystery wrapped in a small enigma.”

“Oh, no.” His smile — all intersecting angles — radiates behind his specs. He’s risen onto his little toes again, Horatio Alger-style. “I work for you. Until you work for me. Everything’s the same. I love you. I keep you in my prayers.”

I’m fearful he may hug, kiss, high-five or double-hander me. Two male hugs in one morning is a lot. Men don’t have to do that all the time, even though it doesn’t mean we’re not sensitive. I open the car door and stiffly get myself inside before the inescapable happens. I shut the door and lock it. Mike’s left standing out on Timbuktu in his black sweater with its fake-fur collar and his little Black Watch cap. He’s speaking something. I can hear the buzz of his voice, but not the sense, through the window. I don’t care what he’s saying. It’s not about me. I get the motor started and begin to mouth words he’ll “understand” through the window glass. “Abba-dabba, dabba-dabba, dabba-dabba-dabba, dabba-dabba,” I say, then smile, wave, bow in my car seat. He says something back and looks triumphant. He gives me the thumbs-up sign and nods his head proudly. “Abba dabba, dabba, dabba-dabba,” I say back and smile. He nods his head again, then steps back, effects a small wave, laughs heartily. And that is it. I’m off.

A dual sensation — pleasure and enthusiasm — unexpectedly skirls through my middle by the time I reach Ocean Avenue; and alloyed with it is another bracing sensation, from my arms down to my fists, of complete readiness to “take hold.” I actually envision these words— take hold —in watery letters like an old eight-ball fortune. And there’s also, simultaneously, a seemingly opposite feeling of release —from something. Sometimes we know complex pressures are building and roiling, and can finger exactly what they’re about — a gloomy doctor visit, a big court case before a mean-spirited judge, an IRS audit we wish to God wasn’t happening. And other times, we have to plumb the depths, like seeking a warm seam in a cold pond. Only, this time it’s easy. Full, pleasurable release and bold, invigorating authority both exude from the sudden, simple prospect of handing over the Realty-Wise reins to Mike Mahoney.

At first blush, of course, it’s a heresy. Except, life on the Next Level is only what you invent. And as Mike pointed out two days ago (and I scoffed at), residential real estate’s all about what somebody invented. I could sign the papers right now and be on top of the world. Even if it’s the worst idea in the world and leaves me rudderless, with yawning angst-filled days during which I never get out of my pj’s, it still feels like the right invention now. And now is where I am. (This feels, of course, like a Permanent Period resurrection. But if it is, I don’t care.)

There’s no sign of returning 5-K runners here at the corner, or much mid-day traffic, not even post-race street litter — only the starting line, whitewashed across the north-bound side of the avenue. A black man — the docent at Our Lady — is just now carting Father Ray’s aluminum blessing ladder across the lawn to an arched side doorway. He leans the ladder against the stucco exterior, steps in the door, closes it behind him and does not come out again.

My instinct now is to turn right and get myself home — a better second act with my son, the hoped-for return of my daughter, the crucial call from Sally. The resumption of the day’s best, if unlikely, hopes for itself.

Only another powerful urging directs me not to turn right, but to cross the median and go left, and north, up the peninsula toward Ortley Beach. I know what I’m up to here. I’m empowered by the dual sense of release and take hold, which don’t come often and almost never together, and so must be heeded as if ordained by God.

There are — I admit this at risk to myself, though all men know it’s true and all women know men think it — there are ideal women in the world. Sally said it about me in her letter — which means the same is true for how women calculate men. In my view, there’s at least one ideal person for all of us, and probably several. For men, these are the women who make you feel especially smart, that you’re uniquely handsome in a way you yourself always believed you were, who bring out the best in you and, by some generosity or need in themselves, cause you to feel generous, clever, intuitive as hell about all sorts of things and successful in the world exactly the way you’d like to be. Pity the man who marries such a woman, since she’ll eventually drive him crazy with undeserved approval and excessive, unwanted validations. Not that I’d know, having married two “challenger” types, who may have loved me but never looked upon me with less than a seasoned eye, and whose basic watchwords to friend and foe alike were, “Well, let’s just see about that. I’m not so sure.” In any case, they both left me flat as a flounder — though Sally may be coming back at this moment.

These ideal women can actually make you be smarter than you are, but are finally only suitable for fleeting escapades, for profound and long-running flirtations never acted on, for unexpected driving trips to Boston or after-hours cocktails at shadowy red-booth steak houses like the one Wade Arsenault tried to lure me to yesterday with his Texas-bred, ball-crusher, definitely not ideal daughter, Vicki/Ricki, who anybody’d be smart to steer wide of, but who I once unaccountably wanted to marry. These women are also meant for sweetly intended, affectionate one-nighters (two at the max), after which you both manage to stay friends, conduct yourselves even better than before, possibly even “enjoy” each other a time or two every six months or six years, but never consider getting serious about, since everybody knows that serious ruins everything. Marguerite might’ve qualified, but wasn’t truly ideal.