Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

I said something then, in my daze. I believe I said, “I should’ve spent more time with you when you were young.”

She said, “That’s not true, Frank. I didn’t want to spend more time with you then. Now’s better.” That’s all I remember from those early hours in the hospital and from my daughter, who’s now back “camping out” with Cookie in Gotham, which pleases me, since she may have decided that “the big swim,” the “out in the all of it” were just mirages to keep her from accepting who she is, and that the smooth, gliding life of linked boxes may not be the avoidance of pain but just a way of accepting what you can’t really change. It’s possible she’s come to feel fortunate.

T he passengers across the aisle from Sally have turned out to be Kansas Citians, a jolly, rotund couple named the Palfreymans. Burt Palfreyman is hairless as a cue ball, from chemo, and as blind as Milton from retinal cancer, but full of vim and vigor about a whole new round at “the clinic.” He’s had many others and tells Sally his hair’s getting tired of growing in and has just decided to stay gone. They don’t say what’s ailing Burt this time, though Natalie mentions something about “the whole lymph system,” which can’t be good. Sally remarks that my son lives in Kansas City, too, and works for Hallmark, news that turns them reverent, provoking approving nods, though Burt’s nod is more toward the seat-back in front of him. “First-class outfit,” Burt says soberly, and Natalie, who’s pleasingly rounded, with frizzed salmon-colored hair and puffy cheeks gone venous with worry and long life, stares over at me, around Sally, as if I might not know what a first-class outfit Hallmark really is and that that’s a serious lapse of info, needing correction. I smile back as if I cannot speak but can nod. “It’s all family-owned,” she says. “And they do absolutely everything for Kanzcity.” Burt grins at nothing. He’s wearing a blue velour lounging outfit with purple piping down the legs and looks as comfortable as a blind man can look in an airplane. “They’re right up there with UPS,” Burt says (which he calls “ups”), “or any of those big outfits when it comes to employee benefits, compassionate leave, that kind of thing. Oh yeah. You bet.” He might’ve worked for them in the Braille card department.

Sally touches my left hand as if to say, Don’t let these nice souls give you the blues. We’ll be landing soon.

Natalie goes on to say that Burt has just retired after thirty-five years working for a company that makes laundry starch — another solid family-owned outfit in K.C. — which made a place for him in the accounting department once his eyes got to be a problem. They have kids “out west,” which Sally admits she does, too, allowing Natalie to know we’re second-timers. Natalie says the two of them are thinking of going ahead and moving up to Rochester after selling their family home in Olathe. “At least get a condo,” she says, since they’re up and back so much now. They like Burt’s cancer doctor, who’s had them to dinner once, and feel they could fit well into the Rochester community, which is not so different from K.C. “A good deal less crime.” They’ll just need to get used to the winter, which seems a fun idea to her. They’ve made some “relator” appointments to see some places in between Burt’s tests. “Health’s the last frontier, isn’t it?” Natalie hoods her eyes and looks straight to me, as if this is a fact men need to be aware of. I smile back a smile of false approval, though my mind runs to the idea of a barium enema self-administered on a cold bathroom floor, which is what I always think of when I envision my “health”—either something not good or else something that was good but will soon be no more. A permanent past tense. A lost frontier, not just the last one. Health ’s a word I never use.

Getting on to the end, then.

Paul, as I said, along with Jill, has returned to K.C. and to the sweet feasible life of greeting cards and giving words to feelings others lack their own words for. On the day I left the hospital, we buried Paul’s time capsule behind the house in a quiet ceremony that was very much like burying a dog or a goldfish. Paul put in some of his riotous rejects, Jill put in a lock of her yellow hair for purposes of DNA, later on. Detective Marinara (whose name turns out to be Lou) put in a broken pair of handcuffs Paul had wangled out of him, in addition to his police business card. Sally put in a smooth granite pebble off the beach at Mull and another off our beach in Sea-Clift. Clarissa, with Cookie present, put in the mahogany gearshift knob off Thom’s Healey. Mike put in his signed Gipper photo and a green prayer flag. Ann did not attend, although she was invited and may now have made some positive strides with her daughter. I, as a joke, put in one of the spent titanium BBs (packaged in a plastic baggie), which I apparently “passed” on the operating table in Toms River, no doubt when I woke up in mid-surgery and everyone had a good laugh at my expense. Paul was pleased, made a couple of corny wisecracks about the Millennium, and then we covered the little missile up with sand. (I’m sure in the next big blow it’ll be unearthed and washed away and turn up in Africa or Scotland, which will work out just as well.) For whatever Paul may have said to Ann or Ann to him about wanting to break into the real estate industry, this never came up between us — a relief, since his style of everyday mainstream life would never adapt well to the need to coax and coddle and be confessor, therapist, business adviser and risk assessor to the variety of citizen pilgrims who cross my threshold most days. He would like them, do his level best for them, but ultimately think everything they said was a riot and wouldn’t understand the heart from which their words drew strength — much as he doesn’t understand mine. He is a different kind of good man from most. And though I love him and expect him to live long and thrive, I don’t truly understand him much, cannot do much for him except be happy he’s where he is and with his love, and that he will know increase in his days. Perhaps over time, if I have time, I will even come to know them better than I do.

As to Mike and the sale of Realty-Wise, I have elected to take a Tibetan partner. In the time that I was laid up, he not only sold the Timbuktu house-on-wheels to a wholly different Indian client — they apparently come in droves when they come — but also sold 61 Shore Road, cracked piers and all, plus four chalets, to Clare Suddruth, who showed up Friday morning after Thanksgiving with Estelle, having called the emergency number when I didn’t answer, and was so eager to get his money out of his pocket and into somebody else’s that Mike feared he might be “losing an inner struggle” (experiencing a psychotic detachment) and possibly wasn’t responsible for his acts. A call to the bank settled that. Mike also turned down a listing on the Feensters’ beach house when he was approached by poor dead Drilla’s sister, and discreetly passed the business along to Sea-Vu Associates. Nick, it turns out, had many more enemies than the two Russian kids, and had not been as fastidious in his personal affairs as would’ve been needed to keep him above ground.

At first, Mike didn’t see how partnership would suit his ambitions or his arrangements with his Spring Lake dowager. But I convinced him that in the long run, which might not be such a long run, all will be his to buy out. I said I was not ready for éminence grise status or to retire to an island, and that in the coming housing climate with a big shiny bubble around it, he’d be smarter to be half-in instead of all the way, to retain some liquidity, keep a diverse portfolio and his options open for the deal you can’t see coming until it’s suddenly there. He has his children to think about, I reminded him, and a soon-to-be former wife he may someday feel differently about. We’re not having a new shingle made or opening a bigger office, though we’ve subscribed to the Michigan State Newsletter and to “Weneedabreak.com.” On his business card it will soon say “Mike Mahoney, Co-Broker,” and he is thinking of enrolling in an executive boot camp in the Poconos, which I approve of. On the scale of human events and on the great ladder that’s ever upward-tending, this has left him satisfied. At least for now.