Richard Ford - The Sportswriter

“They’re things I believe in. More people could stand to think that way, if you ask me.”

“Well, you oughta believe them to yourself quietly then. I can’t take this.”

At this moment, Elvis Presley comes to the living room door and stares up at me. He’s heard something he doesn’t like and intends to find out if I’m responsible. “I don’t even like men,” Vicki says, staring belligerently at her spoon. “Ya’ll don’t make yourselves happy ten minutes at a time. You and Everett both. Y’act like tormented dogs. Plus, you bring it all on yourselves.”

“I think it’s you that’s unhappy.”

“Yeah? But it’s really you, though, idn’t it? You hate everything.”

“I’m pretty happy.” I put on a big smile, though it’s true I am heartsick. “You make me happy. I know that. You can count on that.”

“Oh boy. Here we go. I shouldn’t of told you about your ex and whatever his name is. You been Serious Sam ever since.”

“I’m not Serious Sam. I don’t even care about that.”

“Shoot. You should’ve seen your face when I told you.”

“Look at it now, though.” My grin is ear-to-ear, though it is impossible to argue in behalf of your own good spirits without defeating them completely and getting mad as hell. Elvis Presley has seen enough and goes back behind the couch. “Why don’t we just get married?” I say. “Isn’t that a good idea?”

“Because I don’t love you enough, that’s why.” She looks away. More dishes clatter in the kitchen. Cups settle noisily into saucers. Far away, in a room I know nothing of, a phone rings softly.

“Now that’s the phone,” I hear Lynette say to no one in particular, and the ringing stops.

“Yes you do,” I say brightly. “That’s just a bunch of hooey. I’ll get right down on my knees right now.” I get onto my knees and walk on them all the way around the table to where she sits, thighs crossed regally and entombed in taut panty hose. “A man’s on his knees to plead and beg with you to marry him. He’d be faithful, and take out the garbage and do dishes and cook, or at least pay someone to do it. How can you say no?”

“It ain’t gon be hard,” she says giggling, embarrassed at me for yet another reason.

“Frank?”

My name. Unexpected. Called from somewhere in the unexplored cave of the house. Wade’s voice. Probably he and Cade want me up there to watch the end of the Knicks game — once again everything decided in the last twenty seconds. But wild horses couldn’t pull me away from here. This is serious.

“Ho, Wade,” I call out, still on my knees in my pleader’s pose in front of his regal daughter. One more bout of ardent pleading-tickling and we’ll both be laughing, and she’ll be mine. And why shouldn’t she? My always needn’t be forever. I’m ready for the plunge, nervy as a cliff-diver. Though if down the line things go rotten we can both climb the cliffs again. Life is long.

“Phone’s for you,” Wade calls. “You can take it up here in Lynette’s and my room.” Wade sounds sobered and bedeviled, a pitiable presence from the top of the stairs. A door clicks softly shut.

“Who’s that?” Vicki says scratchily, tugging on her pink skirt as if we’d been caught in heavy petting. Her brassiere strap is now exposed completely.

“I don’t know.” Though I have a terrible bone-aching crisis fear that I have forgotten something important and am about to stare disaster in the face. A special assignment I was supposed to write but have somehow completely neglected, everyone up in New York rushing round in emergency moods trying to find me. Or possibly an Easter date I made months ago and have overlooked, though there’s no one I know well enough to ask me. I cannot guess who it is. I plant a quick kiss of promised return on Vicki’s stockinged knee, get to my feet and head off to investigate. “Don’t move,” I say. The kitchen door is just opening as I leave.

Above floors, a dark and short carpeted hall leads to a bathroom at the end where a light is on. Two doors are shut on one side, but on the other, one stands open, a bluish light shining through. Ahead of me I hear a thermostat click and the sound of whooshing air.

I step into Wade and Lynette’s nuptial sanctum where the blue light radiates from a bed lamp. The bed is also blue, a skirted-and-flounced four-poster canopy, king-sized and wide as a peaceful lake. Nothing is an inch out of place. Rugs raked. Vanity sparkling. No underwear or socks piled on the blue Ultrasuede loveseat beside the window overlooking the windy boat channel. The door to the bathroom is discreetly closed. A smell of face powder lingers. The room is perfect as a place where strangers can accept personal phone calls.

The phone is on the bed table, its conscientious little night light glowing dimly.

“Hello,” I say, with no idea what I will hear, and sink expectant into the soft flounced silence.

“Frank?” X’s voice, solemn, reliable, sociable. I am instantly exhilarated to hear her. But there is an undertone I do not comprehend. Something beyond speech, which is why she is the only one who can call me.

I feel a freeze going right to the bottom of my feet. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s all right,” she says. “Everyone’s all right. Everyone’s fine here. Well, everyone’s not, actually. Someone named, let’s see, Walter Luckett is dead, apparently. I guess I don’t know him. He sounds familiar, but I don’t know why. Who is he?”

“What do you mean, he’s dead?” Consolation spurts right back up through me. “I was with him last night. At home. He isn’t dead.”

She sighs into the receiver, and a dumb silence opens on the line. I hear Wade Arcenault’s voice, soft and evocative, speaking to his son across the hall behind a closed door. A television mumbles in the background, a low crowd noise and a ref’s distant whistle. “Now in the best of all possible worlds….” Wade can be heard to say.

“Well,” X says quietly, “the police called here about thirty minutes ago. They think he’s dead. There’s a letter. He left it for you.”

“What do you mean?” I say, and am bewildered. “You sound like he killed himself.”

“He shot himself, the policeman said, with a duck gun.”

“Oh no.”

“His wife’s out of town, evidently.”

“She’s in Bimini with Eddie Pitcock.”

“Hmm,” X says. “Well.”

“Well what?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry to call you. I just listened to your message.”

“Where’re the children?”

“They’re here. They’re worried, but it isn’t your fault. Clary answered the phone when the police called. Are you with what’s-her-face?” (A first-rate Michigan expression of practiced indifference.)

“Vicki.” Vicki Whatsherface.

“Just wondering.”

“Walter came to the house last night and stayed late.”

“Well,” X says, “I’m sorry. Was he a friend of yours, then?”

“I guess so.” Somebody in Cade’s room claps his hands loudly three times in succession, then whistles.

“Are you all right, Frank?”

“I’m shocked.” In fact, I can feel my fingertips turning cold. I lie down backwards on the silky bedspread.

“The police want you to call them.”

“Where was he?”

“Two blocks from here. At 118 Coolidge. I may have even heard the shot. It isn’t that far.”

I stare up through the open canopy into an absolutely blue ceiling. “What am I supposed to do? Did you already say that?”

“Call a Sergeant Benivalle. Are you all right? Would you like me to come meet you someplace?”

Cade lets out a loud, raucous laugh across the hall.

“Isn’t that the goddamn truth!” Wade says in high spirits. “It is the god-damndest thing, I swear.”