Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

“You might just have to make it up, then.”

Her mouth now transforms into a mirthless almost-smile. I believe she may have quickly crossed her eyes and instantly uncrossed them — another of the eighties-era tics. “I don’t know, Frank. Maybe it’s an urge to clear sssomething up.”

My face, by practice, expresses nothing. Ann and I used to ask each other — when one of us would register a complaint the other couldn’t properly address: “What’s your neurosis allowing you to do that you couldn’t do otherwise?” Mostly the answer was to complain and enjoy it. This might be the urge that Marguerite’s experiencing. “Would you really like to know what to confess, no matter what?” I ask. “Or would you be happy to just quit feeling this way and never confess anything?”

“I guess the latter, Frank. Iss that horrible?”

“Maybe if you murdered somebody,” I say. Put arsenic in their smoothie at the health club. “Did you murder anybody?” Fincher wouldn’t count.

“No.” She clasps her hands and looks distressed, as if she sort of wished she could say she had murdered somebody, make me believe it, then take it all back, leaving behind a zesty fragrance of doubt. “I don’t think I have the right character for that,” she says wondrously.

My bet, though, is she’s never done anything wrong. Married a shit, been treated shabbily, forgettably rogered the realtor, but then reconstituted herself, married a better sod who left her well-off and didn’t stick around for forever. It’s not all that different from the story behind many doors I knock on, though it doesn’t make much of a climax and I’m not usually a ghost presence. But — the guy with the sailboat that’s driving him nuts; Bettina, the fractious Dutch housekeeper — there is the need to tell, which is its own virtue and complaint. That’s why I’m here — it could be the modern dilemma. But like many modern dilemmas, it’s susceptible to a cure.

“I’m not sure we have characters, Marguerite. Are you? I’ve thought a lot about it.” I press my lips together to signal this is my judgment in re her problem. Any suspicion that I might be the problem is entirely nugatory.

“No.” A quarter smile of recognition emerges onto her whole face. I wonder if I already said this to her sixteen years ago in some post-coital posturings. I hope not. “No, I’m not. I’m Epissscopalian, Frank, but I’m not religious.”

I give a wink of “me, neither” assurance. “We may think we have a character because it makes everything simpler.”

“Yes.”

“But what we do have for sure,” I say supremely, “is memories, presents, futures, desires, hatreds, et cetera. And it’s our job to govern those as much as we can. How we do that may be the only character we have, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes.” She is possibly stumped.

“ Your job, I think, is to control your memory so it doesn’t bother you. Since from what you say, it shouldn’t bother you. Right? There isn’t even a bad memory there.”

“No.” She clears her throat, lets her eyes drop. I may be veering near privileged subjects, where I don’t want to veer, but the truth is the truth. “And how do I do that, Frank?” she says. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”

“No. I don’t think that’s the problem at all.” I’m beaming. I certainly should have been able to explain this decades back, in the kitchen, over our muffin. Isn’t that where we want our casual couplings to lead us? To someone we can tell something to? Even if there isn’t anything to tell. Maybe it’s me who’s reincarnated. “I don’t think there is a problem,” I say enthusiastically. “You just have to believe this feeling of wanting to confess something is a natural feeling. And probably a good omen for the future.” My eyes roam up and catch the knowing gimlet eye of old Purcell, bearing down on me in his white-hunter outfit. I am your surrogate here, I think, not your adversary. It is the genius soul of Sponsoring.

“The future?” Marguerite clears her throat again, stagily. We’ve moved onto the bright future, where we belong.

“Sometimes we think that before we can go on with life we have to get the past all settled.” I am as soulful as a St. Bernard. “But that’s not true. We’d never get anyplace if it was.”

“Probably not.” She’s nodding.

Then neither of us says anything. Silences are almost always affirming. I cast a wary eye down into the aquarium, glass as thick as a bank window and beveled smooth all around its rhomboid to guard against gashed shins, snagged hems, toddlers and pets poking their eyes out. My face is mirrored back in the Buick bumper — as rubbery as the Elephant Man. I see one of the huge, glaucal goldfish looking at me. How would one feed them? Probably there’s a way. Possibly they’re not real—

“Ah yew plannin’ on a big Thanks-givin’?” I hear Marguerite say, Dixie, again, the music in her voice.

I smile stupidly across the table. When I first had my titanium BBs downloaded, I experienced all sorts of strange enervated zonings out and in, often at extremely unhandy moments — across the desk from a client who’d just signed an offer sheet obligating him to pay $75,000 if the deal fell through; or listening to a man tell me how the death of his wife made an instant sale a matter of highest priority. Then, ZAP, I’d be lost in a reverie about a Charlie Chan movie I saw, circa age ten, and whether it was Sidney Toler or Warner Oland in the title role. Again, Psimos says these “episodes” are not relatable to treatment. But I say baloney. I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t have what I do have. Either it was the BBs or the thought of BBs — a distinction that’s not a difference.

“Do you have childrun?” I’m sure she’s wondering what the hell’s wrong with me.

“Yeah. Absolutely.” I’m fuzzy-woozy. “They’re coming. For Thanksgiving. Two of ’em.” Sponsors aren’t supposed to tell our stories. Expanded human contexts lead to random personal assessments. We’re here to do a job, like the State Farm guy. Plus, now that we’ve gotten past it, I don’t want to risk a needless revisitus of who was who, when when was when. It’s not the key to Marguerite’s mystery. There is no key. There is no mystery. We all live with that revelation.

I abruptly stand right up, straight as a sentry as if on command, but am woozy still. Satisfactory visit. Needs to be over. Done and done well. If I had a clipboard, it’d now be under my arm. If I had a hat, I’d be turning it by its brim.

“Are you leavin’?” Marguerite looks up at me, surprised, but automatically rises (a little stiffly) to let me know it’s okay and not rude if I have to go. She looks hopefully across the strange aquarium table, then takes a hesitant turning step toward the foyer, her two feet going balky, as though they’d gone to sleep in their Guccis. “I ’magine you have other ssstops to make.” (Do I walk like that?)

I’m eager to go, though still light-headed. Sponsor visits are more demanding than they seem and adieus can be unwieldy. People of both genders sometimes need to lavish hugs on you. I’m nervous Marguerite’s going to spin round when we hit the parquet, take both my hands in her two warm ones, bull her way inside the invisible screen, peer into my bleary orbs, smile a smile of lost laughter and past regret and say something outrageous. Like: “We don’t have to pretend anymore.” Though we do! “…fate didn’t intend us…it’s true and it’s sssad…but you’ve counseled me so well…couldn’t you hold me for just a moment?…” I’ll have a heart attack. You think you’ll always be open to these impromptu clenches and whatever good mischief they lead to. But after a while you’re not.