Richard Ford - Independence Day

Up the heavy oak stairs, I make straight for the brown-curtained and breezy bedroom on the front of the house. It has become a point of policy with Sally — whether she’s here or in New York with a vanload of Lou Gehrig’s sufferers seeing Carnival —that I have my own space when I show up. (So far there’s been no quibbling about where I sleep once the sun goes down — her room on the back). But this small, eave-shaded, semi-garret overlooking the beach and the end of Asbury Street has been designated mine, though it would otherwise be a spare: brown gingham wallpaper, an antique ceiling fan, a few tasteful but manly grouse-hunting prints, an oak dresser, a double bed with brass rainbow headboard, an armoire converted to a TV closet, a mahogany clotheshorse, all serviced by its own demure small forest-green and oak bathroom — a layout perfect for someone (a man) you don’t know too well but sort of like.

I draw the curtains, strip down and crawl between the cool blue-paisley sheets, my feet still clammy from being rained on. Only when I reach to turn off the bedside lamp, I notice on the table a book that was not here last week, a red hand-me-down paperback of Democracy in America , a book I defy anyone to read who is not on some form of life support; and beside it, conspicuously, is a set of gold cuff links engraved with the anchor, ball and chain of the USMC, my old service branch (though I didn’t last long). I pluck up one cuff link — it has a nice jeweler’s heft in my palm. I try, leaning on my bare elbow, to remember through the haze of time if these are Marine issue, or just some trinket an old leatherneck had “crafted” to memorialize a burnished valiance far from home.

Except I don’t want to wonder over the origin of cuff links, or whose starchy cuffs they might link; or if they were left for my private perusal, or pertain to Sally calling up last night to complain about life’s congestions. If I were married to Sally Caldwell, I would wonder about that. But I’m not. If “my room” on Fridays and Saturdays becomes Colonel Rex “Knuckles” Trueblood’s on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I only hope that we never cross paths. This is a matter to be filed under “laissez-faire” in our arrangement. Divorce, if it works, should rid you of these destination-less stresses, or at least that’s the way I feel now that welcome sleep approaches.

I thumb quickly back through the old, soft-sided de Tocqueville, Vol. II, check its yellowed title page for ownership, note any underlinings, margin notes (nothing), then remember my experiment from college: supine, holding the book up at a proper viewing distance, I open it at random and begin to read, testing how many seconds will pass before my eyes close, the book sinks and I fall off the cushiony cliff to dreamland.

I commence: “How Democratic Institutions and Manners Tend to Raise Rents and Shorten the Terms of Leases.” Too boring even to sleep through. Outside I hear girls giggling on the beach, hear the tame surf as a soft, sleep-bringing ocean breeze raises and floats the window curtain.

I thumb back farther and start again: “What Causes Almost All Americans to Follow Industrial Callings.” Nothing.

Again: “Why So Many Ambitious Men and So Little Lofty Ambitions Are to Be Found in the United States.” Possibly I can get my teeth into this at least for eight seconds: “The first thing that strikes a traveler to the United States is the innumerable multitudes of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue lofty aims….”

I set the book back on the table beside the Marine cuff links and lie now more awake than asleep, listening to the children’s voices and, farther away, nearer the continent’s sandy crust, a woman’s voice saying, “I’m not hard to understand. Why are you so goddamn difficult?” Followed by a man’s evener voice, as if embarrassed: “I’m not,” he says, “I’m not. I’m really, really not.” They talk more, but their sounds fade in the light airishness of Jersey seaside.

Then, suddenly, peering up at the brassy fan listlessly turning, I for some reason wince— whing-crack! — as though a rock or a scary shadow or a sharp projectile had flashed close and just missed maiming me, making my whole head whip to the right, setting my heart to pounding thunk-a, thunk-a, thunk-a, thunk-a, exactly the way it did the summer evening Ann announced she was marrying Frank Lloyd O’Dell and moving to Deep River and stealing my kids.

But why now?

There are winces, of course, and there are other winces. There is the “love wince,” the shudder — often with accompanying animal groan — of hot-rivet sex imagined, followed frequently by a sense of loss thick enough to upholster a sofa. There is the “grief wince,” the one you experience in bed at 5 a.m., when the phone rings and some stranger tells you your mother or your first son has “regretfully” expired; this is normally attended by a chest-emptying sorrow which is almost like relief but not quite. There is the “wince of fury,” when your neighbor’s Irish setter, Prince Sterling, has been barking at squirrels’ shadows for months, night after night, keeping you awake and in an agitation verging on dementia, though unexpectedly you confront the neighbor at the end of his driveway at dusk, only to be told you’re blowing the whole dog-barking thing way out of proportion, that you’re too tightly wrapped and need to smell the roses. This wince is often followed by a shot to the chops and can also be called “the Billy Budd.”

What I have just suffered, though, is none of these and has left me light-headed and tingling, as if an electrical charge had been administered via terminals strapped to my neck. Black spots wander my vision, my ears feel as though glass tumblers were pressed over them.

But then, just as quickly, I can hear the beach voices again, the slap of a book being closed, a feathery laugh, somebody’s sandy sandals being slapped together, a palm being smacked on someone’s tender red back and the searing “owwwweeee,” while the tide fondly chides the ever-retreating shingle.

What I feel rising in me now (a consequence of my “big-time wince”) is a strange curiosity as to what exactly in the hell I’m doing here; and its stern companion sensation that I really ought to be somewhere else. Though where? Where I’m wanted more than just expected? Where I fit in better? Where I’m more purely ecstatic and not just glad? At least someplace where meeting the terms, conditions and limitations set on life are not so front and center. Where the rules are not the game.

Time was when a moment like this one — stretched out in a cool, inviting house not my own, drifting toward a nap, but also thrillingly awaiting the arrival of a sweet, wonderful and sympathetic visitor, eager to provide what I need because she needs it too — time was when this state was the best damned feeling on God’s earth, in fact was the very feeling the word “life” was coined for, plus all the more intoxicating and delectable because I recognized it even as it was happening, and knew with certainty no one else did or could, so that I could have it all, all, all to myself, the way I had nothing else.

Here, now, all the props are in place, light and windage set; Sally is doubtless on her way at this instant, eager (or at least willing) to run up, jump in bed, find once more the key to my heart and give it a good cranking-up turn, thereby routing last night’s entire squadron of worries.

Only the old giddyup (mine) is vanished, and I’m not lying here a-buzz and a-thrill but listening haphazard to voices on the beach — the way I used to feel, would like to feel, gone. Left is only some ether of its presence and a hungrified wonder about where it might be and will it ever come back. Nullity, in other words. Who the hell wouldn’t wince?