Richard Ford - Independence Day

Sally, when I punch in her 609 number, answers thrillingly on the first jingle.

“So where in the world are you?” she says, her voice tingly and happy but also a voice that’s taking a reading. “I left you a long and poignant message last night. I may have been drunk.”

“And I tried to call you right back all this morning, to see if you’d fly up here in a chartered Cessna and come to Cooperstown with us. Paul thinks it’d be great. We’d have some fun.”

“Well. My goodness. I don’t know,” Sally says, acting happily confused. “Where are you right now?”

“Right now I’m in the Basketball Hall of Fame. I mean we’re visiting it — we’re not enshrined here. Not yet anyway.” I feel the most buoyant good spirit expand in my chest. All is not pissed away.

“But isn’t that in Ohio?”

“No, it’s in Springfield, Mass, where the first peach basket was nailed to the first barn door and the rest is history. Football’s in Ohio. We don’t have time for that.”

“Where are you going, again?”

She is enjoying all this, possibly relieved, acting breathless and appealed to. Plans might still spring to life. “Cooperstown, New York. One hundred seventy miles away,” I say enthusiastically. A woman several nooks down leans back and glowers at me as if I were making a call that amplified my voice in her receiver. Possibly she feels at risk being near a person in legitimately high spirits. “So whaddaya say?” I say. “Fly up to Albany right now, and we’ll pick you up.” I am talking too loud and need to put a lid on it before a Hall of Fame SWAT team is summoned. “I’m serious,” I say, more modulated, but more serious too.

“Well, you’re very sweet to ask.”

“I am very sweet. That’s right. But I’m not letting you off the hook.” I say this a bit too loud again. “I just woke up this morning and realized I was crazy as hell last night and that I’m crazy about you. And I don’t want to wait till Monday or whenever the hell.” For a nickel I’d muster Paul right back to the car and beat it back down to South Mantoloking along with all the other beach yahoos. Though I’d be a bad man for doing so. Being willing to invite Sally in on our sacred hombre-to-hombre is already bad enough — though like anybody else, Paul’d have more fun being along on something technically illicit. The world, as I told him, lets you do what you want if you can live with the consequences. We’re all free agents.

“Could I ask you something?” she says, two jots too serious.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It may be too serious. I’m not a serious man. And it can’t be about you not coming up here.”

“Would you tell me what you find so enthralling now that you didn’t notice last night?” Sally says this in a self-mocking, good-natured way. But important info is being sought. Who could blame her?

“Well,” I say, my mind suddenly whirring. A man exits the bathroom, so that I get a stern whiff of urinal soap. “You’re a grownup, and you’re exactly the way you seem, at least as far as I can tell. Everybody’s not like that.” Including me. “And you’re loyal and you have a quality of straight-talking impartiality”—this sounds wrong—“that isn’t inconsistent with passion, which I really like. I guess I just have a feeling some things have to be investigated further between you and me or we’ll both be sorry. Or I will anyway. Plus, you’re just about the prettiest woman I know.”

“I’m just about not the prettiest woman you know,” Sally says. “I’m pretty in a usual way. And I’m forty-two. And I’m too tall.” She sighs as though being tall made her tired.

“Look, just get on a plane and come up here, and we’ll talk all about how pretty you are or aren’t while the moon sets on romantic Lake Otsego and we enjoy a complimentary cocktail.” While Paul goes who knows where? “I just feel a tidal attraction to you, and all boats rise on a rising tide.”

“Your boat seems to rise most when I’m not around,” Sally says with distinctly diminished good nature. (It’s possible I’m not providing convincing answers again.) The woman in the far phone nook snaps closed an immense black patent-leather purse and goes striding quickly out. “Do you remember saying you wanted to be the ‘dean’ of New Jersey realtors last night? Do you even remember that? You talked all about soybeans and drought and shopping centers. We drank a lot. But you were in a state of some kind. You also said you were beyond affection. Maybe you’re still in some state.” (I should probably toss off a couple of barks to prove I’m nuts.) “Did you visit your wife?”

This is not the wisest tack for her to take, and I should actually warn her off. But I simply stare at my little black phone screen, where it states in cool green letters: Do you wish to make another call?

“Right. I did,” I say.

“And how was that — was that nice?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you think you like her better when she’s not around?”

“She’s not ‘not around,’” I say. “We’re divorced. She’s remarried to a sea captain. It’s like Wally. She’s officially dead, only we still talk.” I’m suddenly as deflated by a thought of Ann as I was happy to be thinking of Sally, and what I’m tempted to say is, “But the real surprise is she’s leaving ole Cap’n Chuck, and we’re getting married again and moving to New Mexico to start up an FM station for the blind. That’s really the reason I’m calling — not to invite you to come up here, just to give you my good news. Aren’t you happy for me?” There’s an unwieldy silence on the line, after which I say: “I really just called up to say I had a good time last night.”

“I wish you’d stayed. That’s what my message said, if you haven’t heard it yet.” Now she is mum. Our little contretemps and my little rising tide have gone off together in a stout, chilly breeze. Good spirits are notoriously more fragile than bad.

A tall, big-chested man in a pale-blue jumpsuit comes strolling down the phone alcove, holding a little girl by the hand. They stop along the opposite phone bank, where the man begins to make a call, reading off a paper scrap as the little girl, in a frilly pink skirt and a white cowboy shirt, watches him. She looks at me across the shadowy way — a look, like mine, of needing sleep.

“Are you still there?” Sally says, possibly apologetic.

“I was watching a guy make a phone call. I guess he reminds me of Wally, though he shouldn’t, since I don’t think I ever saw Wally.”

Another mum pause. “You really have very few sharp angles, you know, Frank. You’re too smooth from one thing to the next. I can’t keep up with you very well.”

“That’s what my wife thinks too. Maybe you two should discuss it. I think I’m just more at ease in the mainstream. It’s my version of sublime.”

“And you’re also very cautious, you know,” Sally says. “And you’re noncommittal. You know that, don’t you? I’m sure that’s what you meant last night about being beyond affection. You’re smooth and you’re cautious and you’re noncommittal. That’s not a very easy combination for me.” (Or a good one, I’m sure.)

“My judgments aren’t very sound,” I say, “so I just try not to cause too much trouble.” Joe Markham said something like this yesterday. Maybe I’m being transformed into Joe. “But when I feel something strong, I guess I jump in. That’s how I feel right now.” (Or did.)

“Or you seem to anyway,” Sally says. “Are you and Paul having lots of fun?” A shift back in the direction of rising spirits, speaking of smooth.

“Yeah. Loads and loads. You would too.” I get a faint but putrid sniff of the dead grackle still on my receiver hand. Apparently it’s to be on my skin forever and ever. I intend to ignore this last remark about seeming to jump in.