Richard Ford - The Lay of the Land

But what I wondered, at my desk with a copy of the Asbury Press, gazing out my window, was — it was a kind of minor revelation: Am I not just feeling what plenty of other humans feel all the time but don’t pay any attention to? People with no worrisome follow-up tests next Wednesday, civically alert citizens, members of PACs, schmoes who haven’t lost their spouses to a memory of love lost? And if so, do I even have any excuse to feel insulated? At the end of this reverie, I took out my half-written letter to the President and threw it in the trash and promised myself to write a better one, posing more constructive questions I can work on in the meantime — all in an effort to seem less like a nutter and a complainer, and to do whatever the hell we’re all supposed to do to display we’re responsible and doing our best to make life better.

I had several calls waiting before setting off for Surf Road. One from the Eat No Evil people in Mantoloking, wanting to know if gluten-free, no-salt bread in the organic turkey stuffing would be desired, or if the standard organic Saskatchewan spelt was okay. And could they come at 1:45 instead of 2:00? Another was from Wade, a nervous-nelly call to be sure we’re meeting at the Fuddruckers at Exit 102 on the Parkway at 12:30, and to say that he was bringing his own sandwich which he can eat while the Queen Regent comes down (this needed no answer). Another, which I also didn’t answer, was from Mike, apologizing for engaging in the “non-virtuous action of senseless speech” last night — which he certainly did — and accusing himself of covetousness, which I take as a sign that he’s maybe saying no to the Montmorency spaghetti and that I can keep him as a trusted employee and house-selling house-a-fire.

The fourth call, however, was from Ann, and strummed an ominous minor bass chord in my chest as it bespoke fresh assumptions I don’t share but may have seemed to share at the end of a long and wearisome day.

“It’s easier to leave this as a message than to say it to you, Frank.” My name again. Years ago, when we were married, Ann used to call me “Tootsie,” which embarrassed me in front of people, and then for a while she called me “Satch”—for private personal reasons — this being before “shit-heel” finally won the day. “I didn’t really think ahead much about what I said tonight. I just blurted it. But it still seems right to me. You acted completely stunned. I’m sure I scared you, which I’m sorry about. I certainly don’t have to come to Thanksgiving dinner. You were just sweet to ask. You were very good tonight, by the way, the best I can remember you — to me, anyway.” Cancer obviously agrees with me. “Charley knew what a good man you were, and said so, though probably not to you.” Definitely not. “He always thought I’d have been happier married to you than to him. But you can’t recalculate, I guess. We act on so many things we don’t know very much about, don’t you think? It’s no wonder we’re all a little fucked up — as they say in Grosse Pointe. Anyway, the idea of underlying causes to things has started to oppress me. I didn’t tell you, did I, that I considered attending the seminary after Charley died. It was probably why I came back here. Then I decided religion was just about underlying causes, things that are hidden and have to be treated like secrets all the time. And I—” Click. Time was up.

I sat at my desk, deciding if I wanted to hear the rest, which waited in message five. Humans generally get out the gist of what they need to say right at the beginning, then spend forever qualifying, contradicting, burnishing or taking important things back. You rarely miss anything by cutting most people off after two sentences. Ann’s spiel about how much we all don’t know about everything we do is linked thematically to Mike Mahoney’s fourth-grade perception on the Barnegat bridge last night that we all live in houses we didn’t choose and that choose us because they were built to somebody else’s specifications, which we’re happy to adopt, and that that says something about the price of baloney. Each has the specific gravity of a rice-paper airplane tossed from the top of the Empire State Building that soars prettily before it’s lost to oblivion. Another example of non-virtuous speech. Maybe Ann’s now dabbling in Eastern religions, since her old-line Reform Lutheranism stopped packing a wallop.

Except. Our ex-wives always harbor secrets about us that make them irresistible. Until, of course, we remember who we are and what we did and why we’re not married anymore.

Message five. “Okay, sweetie, I’ll get this over with. Sorry for the long message. I’ve had a glass of New Zealand sauvignon blanc.” Long messages ask for but don’t allow answers, which is why they’re inexcusable. “I just want to say that I can’t get over the long transit we all make in our lives. The strangest thing we’ll ever know is just life itself, isn’t it?” No. “Not science or technology or mysticism or religion. I’m not looking for underlying causes anymore. I want things to be evident now. When I saw you tonight, at first it was like being in a jet airplane and looking out the window and seeing another jet airplane. You see it, but you really can’t appreciate the distance it is from you, except it’s really far. But by the end, you’d gotten much closer. For the first time in a very long time you were good, like I said in my last message, or maybe I said it at school. Any-hoo, I just thought of one last thing, then I’m going to bed. Do you remember once when you took the little kids to see a baseball game? In Philadelphia, I guess. Charley and I were somewhere on his boat, and you had them down there. And some player, I guess, hit a ball that came right at you. Of course you remember all this, sweetheart. And Paul said you just reached up with one hand and caught it. He said everybody around you stood up and applauded you, and your hand swelled up huge. But he said you were so happy. You smiled and smiled, he said. And I thought when he told me: That’s the man I thought I married. Not because you could catch an old ball, but because that’s all I thought it took to make you happy. I realized that when I married you I thought I could make you happy just like that. I really did think that. Things made you happy then. I think you gave that ball to Paul. I have it somewhere. So okay. Life’s an odd transit. I already said that. It’ll be nice to see Paul tomorrow — at least I hope it will. Good night.” Click.

“It’s also true…” I said these words right into the receiver, with no one on the other end, my fingers touching my Realtor of the Year crystal paperweight from my early selling days in Haddam. It was holding down some unopened mail beside the phone. “…It’s also true”—and here I quit speaking to no one—“that we conjure up underlying causes and effects based on what we want the underlying causes to be. And that’s how we get things all fucked up.” But in any case, Ann would’ve done better marrying me precisely because I could catch a line drive with my bare hand, and then letting that handsome, manly, uncomplicated facility be the theme of life — one I might’ve lived up to — rather than thinking she could ever make me happy ! The kind of happy I was that day at the Vet when “Hawk” Dawson actually doffed his red “C” cap to me, and everyone cheered and I practically convulsed into tears — you can’t patent that. It was one shining moment of glory that was instantly gone. Whereas life, real life, is different and can’t even be appraised as simply “happy,” but only in terms of “Yes, I’ll take it all, thanks,” or “No, I believe I won’t.” Happy, as my poor father used to say, is a lot of hooey. Happy is a circus clown, a sitcom, a greeting card. Life, though, life’s about something sterner. But also something better. A lot better. Believe me.