Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

However, Marguerite says, “This election’s made a mess out of everybody’s Thanksssgiving, hasn’t it, Fruank?” She turns to me in the entryway (I’m fearful) but is smiling ruefully, her veined hands folded at her rose pink waist like a schoolmarm. The little joined apples are glowing cheerfully. She clicks on the soft overhead globe, suffusing us in a deathly glow that guarantees, I trust, no smoochy-smoochy.

“I guess so.” My eyes find the brass umbrella stand beside the door, as if one of the umbrellas is mine and I want it back. I must be going, yes, I must be going.

“You know, when I called to assk for a visit today — and I have these vissits quite often — I intended to ask for help in drafting a letter to President Clinton explaining all we have to be thankful for in this country. And then this other funny old business just popped up.”

“Why’d you change your mind?” Why ask that ! I’ve Sponsored so well up to now! I flinch and move my toes nearer the door. Cold breeze purrs beneath it, chilling my ankles and giving me a shiver. Heat does not reach front foyer. A prospective buyer wouldn’t notice this till it’s too late. I grasp the cold brass knob and twist-test it. Left, right.

“I’m really not sssure now.” Marguerite’s eyes cast down, as though the answer was on the floor.

I give the knob a quarter right twist, staring at the dark roots of Marguerite’s hairline, up the regimental center part to nowhere. She looks up at me brazenly, eyes shining not with stayed tears but with resolve and optimism. “Do you think life’s ssstrange, Frank?” At her waist, her fingers touch tips-to-tips. She’s smiling a wonderful, positivistic Margaret Chase Smith smile.

“Depends on what you compare it to.” If it’s death, then no.

“Oh my.” One eye narrows at me in tolerant ridicule. “That’s really not a very good ansswer. Not for a ssmart boy like yew.”

“You’re right. Sorry.”

“Let’s just ssay it isss strange. That’s the thought to ssay good-bye on, isn’t it?”

“Okay.” I give the ponderous door a ponderous tug. Cold damp instantly falls in on us like a tree.

“Thank you ssso much for coming.” Marguerite cocks her pretty head like a sparrow, her nose flicking up. In no way does she mean “Thanks for coming back finally. ” She extends a soft, bonily mature hand for me to grasp. I take it like a Japanese businessman, give her a firm double-hand up-down up-down, the kind I counsel Mike never to do, then turn loose quick. She looks in my eyes, then down to regard her empty hand, then smiles, shaking her head at life’s weirdness. Women are stronger (and smarter) than men. Whoever doubted it? I attempt my manliest affirming smile, say good and bye between my lips and teeth, step out onto the bristly mat, into the frigid afternoon that looks like evening. Surprisingly, the red door closes hard behind me. I hear a lock go click, footsteps receding. Miraculously, and not a moment too soon, I’m history (again).

B ack in the car, my heart — for reasons best known to Dr. DeBakey— again goes cavorting. Whumpetty, whump-de-whumps like a stallion in a stall when smoke’s in the air. My scalp seizes. My skin prickles. Metallic ozone tang’s in my mouth, as if something foreign had been in the car while I was inside. I sit and try to picture stillness, hold my cheek to the cold-fugged window glass, make myself simmer down so as not to lapse into “a state.” Possibly I should put in my night guard.

Everyone’s wondered: Will I know if I’m having a heart attack? The people who’ve had them — Hugh Wekkum, for one — say you can’t not know. Only goofballs mistake it for acid reflux or over-excitement when you open the IRS letter. Unless, of course, you want to be in the dark — in which case everything’s possible. EMS technicians testify — I read this in the Mayo newsletter I’m now sent whether I want it or not — that when they ask their patients, stretched out on sidewalks turning magenta, or doubled over in the expensive box seats at Shea, or being wheeled off a Northwest flight in Detroit, “What seems to be the trouble, sir?” the answer’s usually “I think I’m having a fucking heart attack, you dickhead. What d’you think’s wrong?” They’re almost always right.

I am not having a heart attack, although having a Sea Biscuit heartbeat may mean something’s not perfect, following on my partial fadeout inside Marguerite’s. (The beef ’n bean burrito on an empty stomach is a suspect.) I take a peek through the hazy glass out at #24, cast in shapeless shadows. Lights downstairs are off, though the carriage lamps still burn. But Marguerite is now standing at an upstairs window, looking down at my car, wherein I’m trying to stop my galloping heart. I believe she’s smiling. Enigmatic. Knowing. I’m willing to bet she has no friends, lives isolated in the world of her inventions — helpfully underwritten by gobs of dough. I could go back inside and be her friend. We could speak of matters differently. But instead, I turn the key, set the wipers flopping, the defrost whooshing, the wheels to rolling — the bass gur-murmur-murmur of my Suburban’s V-8 fortifying me just like the commercials promise. I am on my way to De Tocqueville and to Ann.

But. Let no man say here was not a successful Sponsoring — even if our present selves were under pressure from our past, which is what the past is good at. It’s not so different from thinking you know people when you don’t. Life is strange. What can we do about it? Which is why Sponsors are never concerned with underlying causes. My counsel was good counsel. Significant hurdles were cleared. One talked, one listened. Human character (or a lack thereof) was brought into play. A good future was projected. I’m actually now wondering if Marguerite could’ve been an older sister to Dusty and known nothing of me, only shared certain sibling nervous disorders. People, after all, have sisters. Whoever she was, she had legitimate issues I had a peculiarly good grasp on, and not just about reigniting the pilot light or reading the small print on the dehumidifier warranty. Something real (albeit invented) was bothering someone real (albeit invented). There are few enough chances to do the simple right thing anymore. A hundred years ago this week — in our grateful and unlitigious village past — this kind of good deed happened every day and all involved took it for granted. Looked at this way, Thanksgiving’s not really a mess but more than anything else, commemorates a time we’ll never see again.

I should say something about having cancer, since my health’s on my mind now like a man being followed by an assassin. I’d like not to make a big to-do over it, since my view is that rather than good things coming to those who wait, all things — good, bad, indifferent — come to all of us if we simply hang around long enough. The poet wasn’t wrong when he wrote, “Great nature has another thing to do to you and me…What falls away is always. And is near.”

The telescoped version of the whole cancer rigamarole is that exactly four weeks after my wife, Sally Caldwell, announced she and her posthumous husband, Wally (a recent, honored guest in our house), were reconvening life on new footings and blah, blah, blah, blah, in earnest hope of gaining blah, blah, blah, blah, and better blah, blah, blah, blah, I happened to notice some dried brown blood driblets at about pecker height on my bedsheets, and went straight off to Haddam Medical Arts out Harrison Road to find out what might be going on with what.