Richard Ford - Independence Day

Across in 213, the redhead we’ve watched suddenly whips open the draw drapes in a far-end bedroom window. I see only her head, but she is watching us brazenly. Joe is still lost in his bad-judgment funk.

“The other day Phyl and Sonja were off in Craftsbury,” he says, somberly, “and I got on the phone and called a woman I used to know. Just called her up. Out in Boise. I had a little — really a not so little — thing with her after my first marriage went south. Just before that happened, actually. She’s a potter too. Makes finished-looking stuff she sells to Nordstrom’s. And after we’d talked a while, just past events and whatnot, she said she had to get off the phone and wanted to know my number. But when I told her she laughed. She said, ‘God, Joe, there were a whole lot of pay-phone numbers for you in my book, but none of the M’s are you now.’” Joe stuffs his little hands up under his damp armpits and ponders this, staring in the direction of 213.

“She didn’t mean anything by that,” I say, still wanting to get a move on. Phyllis has not gone much farther than inside the door yet. I can hear her sing-songy voice exclaiming that everything in sight’s the nicest she ever saw. “You probably ended it on a good note way back then, didn’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have called her.”

“Oh, absolutely.” Joe’s little goatee works first this way and then that, as if he is double-checking his memory on all counts. “No blood let. Ever. But I really thought she’d call me later to say we needed to get together — which I was willing to do, to be honest. This house-buying business pushes you to extremes.” Willing-wife-deceiver Joe looks at me importantly.

“Right,” I say.

“But she never called. At least I never knew if she did.” He nods, still staring across at 213, which is painted a not very bright green on the wood above the brick and has a faded red front door no one ever uses. The bedroom curtain zips closed. Joe hasn’t been paying attention there. Some somnolent quality in the moment or the place or the misty rain or the distant rumble of Route 1 has rendered him unexpectedly capable of thinking a whole thought through.

“I don’t think it’s that meaningful, though, Joe,” I say.

“And I don’t even care a goddamned thing about this woman,” he says. “If she’d called me and said she was flying out to Burlington and wanted to meet me in a Holiday Inn and fuck me to death, I’d have most likely begged off.” Joe is not aware he has contradicted himself inside of a minute.

“Maybe she just figured that out and decided to let it go herself. Saved you the trouble.”

“But I’m just struck about my judgment,” Joe says sadly. “I was sure she’d call. That’s all. It was something she did, not something I did, or was even right about. Everything happened without me. Just like what’s going on here.”

“Maybe you’ll like this house,” I say lamely. The big front picture-window curtain at 213 now goes slashing back, and young red-haired Marilyn is standing in the middle, fixing us with what seems to me from here to be an accusing frown, as if whatever she took us for was making her mad enough to flash us the evil eye.

“You must’ve had this happen.” Joe looks toward me but not at me, in fact, looks right straight back over my left shoulder, which is his usual and most comfortable mode of address. “We’re the same age. You’ve been divorced. Had lots of women.”

“We need to go on inside, Joe,” I say. Though I am sympathetic. Not trusting your judgment — and, worse, knowing you shouldn’t trust it for some damn substantial reasons — can be one of the major causes and also one of the least tolerable ongoing features of the Existence Period, one you have to fine-tune out by the use of caution. “But let me just try to say this to you.” I cross my hands in front of my fly, holding my clipboard down there like an insurance adjuster. “When I got divorced, I was sure things had all happened to me and that I hadn’t really acted and was probably a coward and at least an asshole. Who knows if I was right? But I made one promise to myself, and that was that I’d never complain about my life, and just go on and try to do my best, mistakes and all, since there’s only so much anybody can do to make things come out right, judgment or no judgment. And I’ve kept my promise. And I don’t think you’re the kind of guy to fashion a life by avoiding mistakes. You make choices and live with them, even if you don’t feel like you’ve chosen a damn thing.” Joe may think, and I hope he does, that I’ve paid him a compliment of the rarest kind for being untranslatable.

His little bristle-mouth again makes a characteristic 0, which he is totally oblivious to, his eyes going narrow as razor cuts. “Sounds like you’re telling me to shut up.”

“I just want us to have a look at this house so you and Phyllis can think about what you want to do. And I don’t want you to worry about making a mistake before you even have a chance to make one.

Joe shakes his head, sneers, then sighs — a habit I intensely dislike, and for that reason I hope he buys the Houlihan house and discovers an eyelash too late that it’s sitting over a sinkhole. “My profs at Duquesne always said I overintellectualized too much.” He sneers again.

“That’s what I was trying to suggest,” I say, just as the flame-haired woman in 213 whisks across the picture-window space, north to south, totally in the buff, a big protuberant pair of white breasts leading the way, her arms out Isadora Duncan style, her good, muscular legs leaping and striding like a painting on an antique urn. “Wow, look at that,” I say. Joe, though, has shaken his head again over what a brainy guy he is, chuckled and ambled on off, and is already mounting the steps of what might be his last home on earth. Though what he’s just missed is a neighbor’s neighborly way of letting the prospective buyer know what he’s getting into out here, and frankly it’s a sight that causes my estimation of Penns Neck to go up and off the charts. It has mystery and the unexpected as its hidden assets — much better than shade — and Joe, had he seen it, might also have seen where his own interests lay and known exactly what to do.

S tepping inside the little arched front foyer, I can hear Phyllis far in the back already having an important-sounding conversation about gypsy moths, and about what her recent experience has been in Vermont. She is having this, I feel sure, with Ted Houlihan, who shouldn’t be here haunting his own house, badgering the shit out of my clients, satisfying himself they’re the kind of “solid” (meaning white) folks he’ll be comfortable passing his precious fee simple on to.

All the table lamps have been turned on. The floors are shiny, ashtrays cleaned, radiator tops dusted, floor moldings scrubbed, doorknobs polished. A welcome waxy smell deodorizes all — a sound selling strategy for creating the illusion that nobody actually lives here.

Joe, without even offering to greet the owner, goes right into his inspection modality, which he conducts with a brusque and speechless air of military thoroughness. In his smushed-pecker shorts, he takes a quick turn through the living room, which contains mint-condition Fifties couches, sturdy upholstered wing chairs, polished end tables, a sky-blue area rug and some elderly, store-bought prints of bird dogs, parrots in trees and lovers by a peaceful sylvan lake. He leans into the dining room, scans its heavy, polished eight-piece mahogany table-and-chairs ensemble. His beady eyes survey the crown moldings, the chair rails, the swinging kitchen door. He twists the rheostat, brightening then dimming the pink salad-bowl globe, then turns and heads back through the living room and down the central hall, where lights are also on and there’s a security panel with a keypad of oversized cartoon numbers, friendly to older users. With me right behind, Joe strides slappety-slap into each bedroom, takes an unimpressed look around, slides open then closed a closet door, mentally adds up the number of grounded wall sockets, steps to the window, takes in the view, gives each window a little lift to determine if it’s hung correctly or painted shut, then makes for the bathrooms.