Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

I said about her all the good things that I thought: that she was “a major looker,” that her independent “Fighting Bob” La Follette instincts were precisely what this country needed, that I’d love to see her “work” and had a hunch it would wow me and I’d be drawn to it, implying but not actually saying that she wowed me and I was drawn to her (which was sort of true).

Once, Bernice asked me if I’d like to take a drive and smoke some reefer (I declined). And once she said she’d finished a “big nude” just that day and would be interested to know what a guy with my heightened sensibilities and intuition would think about it, since it was “pretty abstract” (I assumed it was a self-portrait and burned to see it). But I declined that, too. I understood that how we felt, standing out on the curb or at the edge of the beach, where the street came to an end and the twinkling shank of the warm evening opened out like a pathway of stars to where the old ferris wheel turned like a bracelet of jewels down at the Sea-Clift Fun Pier — I understood that how we felt was good and might conceivably get better if we had a Sambuca or two and a couple of bong hits at her place and took a look at her big nude. But then pretty quickly who we really were would assert itself, and it wouldn’t feel good for long and we’d end up looking back at our moment on the curb, before anything happened, with slightly painful nostalgia — the way emigrants are said to feel when they leave home, thrilled to set sail for the new land, where life promises riches but where hardships await, and in the end old concerns are only transported to a new venue, where they (we) go back to worrying the same as before. When you’re young, like my daughter, Clarissa, and maybe even my son, you don’t think like that. You think that all it takes is to get free of one box and into a bigger one out in the mainstream. Change the water in your bowl and you become a different fish. But that’s not so. No siree, Bob, not a bit. It’s also true that because of the fiery BBs in my prostate, and despite early-morning and even occasionally late-night erectile events giving positive testimony, I wasn’t sure of my performance ratings under new pressures and definitely didn’t want to face another failure when so few things seemed to be going my way.

Now, though, I believe is the time — if ever one was ordained — for Bernice and me to lash our tiny boats together, at least for the day, and set sail a ways toward sunset. Nothing permanent, nothing that even needs to last past dark, nothing specifically venereal or proto-conjugal (unless that just happens), but still an occasion, an eleventh-hour turn toward the unexpected — the very thing that can happen in life to let us know we’re human, and that could even prove I’m the handful Bernice always knew I’d be and perhaps still am. All this, of course, if it seems like a good idea to her.

Neptune’s Daily Catch Bistro, I already know from our local Shore weekly, is serving its twenty-dollar turkey ’n trimmings buffet to all Ortley Beach seniors, eleven to two. Bernice — because she casually told me — is without companionship today and only working to give herself something to do, then heading home with a jug of Chablis to “watch the Vikes and Dallas at 4:05,” before turning in early. My guess is if I cruise in right at one, almost now, and tell her I’m taking her away for a holiday feast, she’ll beg off with the boss, leave her apron on the doorknob, see the whole idea as a complete blast that I’ve had planned for weeks, feel secretly flattered and relieved and sure she’s had me pegged right and that I’m fuller of surprises than she imagined and that all her appreciation of me these years wasn’t wrong or wasted. In other words, she’ll recognize that I recognize her as the ideal woman, and that even if she’s home in time for the nightly news, she’ll have gotten more than she bargained for — which is all that usually counts with humans.

And as an added inducement, bringing Bernice Podmanicsky for Thanksgiving dinner will drive my kids crazy. Worse than if I’d brought home a Finnish midget from the circus, a six-foot-eight fag comb-out assistant from Kurl Up ’n Dye in Lavallette, or a truckload of talking parrots that sing Christmas carols a cappella. It’ll drive them — Paul especially — into paralyzed, abashed and scalding, renunciating silence, which is what I may now require of my Thanksgiving festivity. Loathing will run at warp speed. Sinister “What’s happened to him ?” grimaces will radar between siblings who already don’t like each other. Your kids may be the hapless victims of divorce and spend their lives “working out” their “issues” on everybody in sight, but they damn straight don’t want you to have any issues, or for their boats to get rocked while they’re doing their sanctified “work.” They want instead for you to provide them a stable environment for their miseries (they might as well be adopted). Except my view is that if kids are happy to present us aging parents with their own improbabilities, why not return the favor? A diverse table of Paul, Jill, Clarissa, Thom, Bernice and myself seems more or less perfect. As is often the case, given time, “things” come into better focus.

And yet. Best case? It could bring out the unforeseeable best in everybody and cause Thanksgiving to blossom into the extended-family, come-one-come-all good fellowship the Pilgrims might (for a millisecond) have thought they were ringing in by inviting the baffled, mostly starved Indians to their table. Paul’s time capsule could turn out to be the rallying projectile he may — or may not — want it to be. Clarissa could send Thom away two-thirds through the bulgur course, and we could all laugh like chimps at what a sorry sack he was. Bernice could do her full repertoire of America’s Dairyland imitations. We might even ask the Feensters in and watch them combust. I could be made happy by any or all or none of these, and the day could end no worse than it began. Though I’d still like Bernice Podmanicsky with me, just as my personal friend against the difficulties that are likely waiting. She would think it was all — whatever it was — a riot or a trip or awesome, and be agreeable when we excused ourselves from the table to take a sunset stroll on the beach, where we could both make ourselves feel ideal all over again, after which I could take her home for the second half of the Vikes’ game — which I might stay for. I’d tell Sally all about it later and be certain she wouldn’t care.

C entral Boulevard enters Ortley Beach from Seaside Heights without fanfare — both being Route 35—the same no-skyline weather-beaten townscape of closed sub shops, blue Slurpee stands, tropical fish outlets and metal-detector rentals, where I’m thinking the 5-K runners must have now come and gone, since I see none of them. In the election three weeks ago — the life-threatening part of which is still unsettled in the Florida court — Ortley Beach gave its own voters their chance to ratify a non-binding “opinion” by the Boro attorney that the town could secede from New Jersey and join a new entity called “South Jersey.” But like our naming-rights initiative, this was hooted down by Republicans as being fiscal suicide, not to mention civically odd and bad for business. Sea-Clift — nearer the end of Barnegat Neck, and farther south — would’ve ended up marooned in “Old Jersey,” tolls could’ve been exacted just for the privilege of leaving town, while Ortley would have had a different governor and a state bird. Municipal conflict would’ve erupted, had cooler heads not prevailed. Though even now I see a few inflaming SECESSION OR DIE stickers still plastered on stop signs and a few juice-shop windows. It’s always been a strange place here, though you can’t tell by looking.