Let Me Be Frank With You

by Richard Ford

  Ann was right, of course. Did I lose respect for her (if that’s in fact what I had and have)? No. Does it make any difference to the global price of turnips? No. Is any part of my life different because I now know her legal age thirty years after she divorced me? I don’t think so. But. Something’s different. Possibly only a poet would know what it is and be able to set it prettily out. But I would say that when the grand inquisitor frowns at me over the top of his ledger and growls, “Bascombe, before I send you where you know you’re going, tell me what it feels like to be divorced. Boil it all down to one emotion, a final assay, something that says it all. And be quick because there’s a line of lost souls behind you and it’s cruel to make them wait . . .” What I’d say to him (or her) is, “Let me put it this way: I loved my wife, we got divorced, then thirty years later she told me she’d always lied about her age. It’s vital information, Your Honor. Though there’s nothing at all I can do with it.” I can hear the oven doors clanking, feel on my cheek the lick of flame. “Next!”

  AS SOON AS ANN GOT THE OFFICIAL “BIG P” DIAGNOSIS, which she accepted as if she’d failed her driver’s test—except there was no re-test, and instead she’d soon wither and die, and there was nothing much anyone could do—she decided in brisk fashion that things had to change, and now. No putting anything off.

  She put Teddy’s mother’s condo on the market (with my old realty nemesis, Domus Isle Homes in Ortley Beach). Like Sally and me, she auctioned all her furniture. She traded her Volvo XC-90 for a sensible Focus. She began efforts to have her old Labradoodle, Mr. Binkler, “surrendered” to a rescue family in Indiana (a sad story lies there). She began to think hard about where to “go.” Scottsdale was a thought. Her daughter lived there, good facilities were on hand, Mayo had an outlet. Switzerland was possible, since there was “interesting” deep-brain-stimulation research going on, and she could get into a program. Back to Michigan came up. She hadn’t lived there in forty years, though a cousin’s son was a clinical MD at U of M, and knew about some experimental double-blind studies he could get her in on. She counseled with Clarissa—the way I did when I faced my prostate issues (different “P”). She made no effort to speak to me about any of it. I only got the story back through the belt-loops from my daughter.

  Then one day the phone rang at my house on Wilson Lane. It was last May the fifteenth. Forsythia was past its rampant array. The playoffs were in full tilt (Pacers had beat the Heat). Obama was getting his little black booty spanked by Romney about fiscal stewardship. Iran had executed someone, and “W” was paying a sentimental visit back to DC, site of all his great triumphs.

  “Mom’s moving to Haddam. She wanted me to tell you,” Clarissa said from Arizona. Dogs were yapping in the background. She was in her clinic.

  “Why?” I said. Possibly I shouted this, as if I was in the kennels with her. Though I was stunned.

  “It’s convenient,” she said. “Medical care’s the same everywhere for what she’s got.” (Which isn’t true.) “She says she wants to be buried close to Ralph.” (Our son who died of Reye’s, when people still did that.) “She said she started adult life in Haddam, so she wants to finish it there. She knows you won’t like it. But she says you don’t own Haddam, and she can do whatever she wants without your permission. So fuck you. She said that. Not me.”

  “When?”

  “Next month, apparently. Teddy’s condo sold for a lot.”

  “Where,” I said, struggling with monosyllables, like a perp in a jumpsuit on a video court appearance.

  “Someplace called Carnage Hill. Nice name. It’s out of town in some woods. Supposedly it’s the state of somebody’s art. I guess the Amish run it.”

  “Quakers,” I said. “Not Amish. They’re different.”

  “Whatever,” Clarissa said. “Don’t do that . . .” She was speaking to someone where she was, no doubt about getting the Chihuahua shaved for surgery.

  “It’s a high-end old folks’ home,” I said.

  “She’s a high-end old folks. And she’s got Parkinson’s.

  And it’s not an old folks’ home. It’s a staged extended-care community. She’ll have her own apartment. It’ll be nice. Get over it.”

  “For how long?”

  “For how long is she staying? Or how long do you have to get over it?”

  “Both.”

  “Forever. The answer’s the same.”

  “Forever?”

  “Whichever comes first,” Clarissa hit the phone against something hard. “I said don’t do that,” she said again to somebody else. Yap, yap, yap.

  “What?” I said.

  “Try not to be an asshole, Frank. She’s dying.”

  “Not any faster than I am. I have prostate cancer—or I did have.”

  “Maybe you two’ll have something to talk about finally. Though maybe not.”

  “We’re divorced.”

  “Right. I seem to remember that. I think that was called my whole fucking life. And Paul’s, too. Thank you very much.” She was only being hostile because she didn’t like giving me unpopular news, and this was the way she could do it. As if she hated me.

  I said nothing then. Nothing seemed like enough.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger,” she said.

  “Then who can I shoot?”

  “I can shoot you the bird,” she said to regain our moment. I love her. She apparently loves me but can be difficult. Both my children can be. “I’m giving you the thumbs-down all the way from Scottsdale. Do yourself a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I already said. Get over it.”

  “Okay. Bye,” I said.

  “Okay bye, yourself.”

  And that was basically that.

  EVEN BEFORE I’D TURNED THE CORNER AT THE END of my block on Wilson, my neck had started zapping me, and I’d begun feeling the first burning-needles-prickle-stabs in the soles of my feet, sensations that now, outside the Carnage Hill gated entry—rich, golden lights shining richly through the naked hardwoods like a swanky casino—had traveled all the way up into my groinal nexus and begun shooting Apache arrows into my poor helpless rectum. It’s classic pelvic pain (I’ve been diagnosed), which, though its true origins are as mysterious as Delphi, is almost certainly ignited by stress. (What isn’t ignited by stress? I didn’t know stress even existed in my twenties. What happened that brought it into our world? Where was it before? My guess is it was latent in what previous generations thought of as pleasure but has now transformed the whole psychic neighborhood.)

  I make the turn through the gates, up winding Legacy Drive. Temperatures had risen by day’s end but now are falling. Freezing rain’s sticking and coating the trees my headlights sweep past. Ditto the road. When I leave I’ll be able to slide down to the Great Road and sluice across into Mullica Pond. “Bascombe went to deliver an orthopedic pillow to his ex-wife and somehow drowned getting home. Details are pending police investigation.” Old James thought death was a distinguished thing. I’m certain it’s not.

  Up close, Carnage Hill looks like an over-sized Hampton Inn, with low-lit “grounds” and paved “contemplation paths” leading into the woods, instead of to a customers-only parking with special slots for 18-wheelers. Tonight, the inside’s all lit up, meaning to convey a special “There’s more here than meets the eye” abundance both to visitors and well-heeled residents alike. Nothing’s bleaker than the stingy, unforgiving one-dimensionality of most of these places; their soul-less vestibules and unbreathable antiseptic fragrances, the dead-eyed attendants and willowy end-of-the-line pre-clusiveness to whatever’s made life be life but that now can be forgotten. Sally’s mother, Freddy, walked ten feet past the door of a suburban “Presbyterian Village” out in Elgin, then turned around and walked back out to the car and died of a (willed) infarct right in the front seat. There are statistics about such things. “I guess she was telling us something,” Sally said.

  Ann, though, is getting her money’s worth out here and is
happy as a goldfish about it. Carnage Hill advertises anything but pre-clusive. On display in the foyer is their “Platinum Certification” from the Federation of Co-axial Senior Life-Is-A-Luxury-Few-Want-To-Leave Society, based in Dallas—the national death-savvy research center. The goal at Carnage Hill is to re-brand aging as a to-be-looked-forward-to phenomenon. Thus, no one working inside wears a uniform. Smart, solid-color, soft-to-the-touch casual-wear is supplied from Land’s End. No one’s called “staff” or treated like it. Instead, alert, friendly, well-dressed, well-groomed “strangers” just seem to happen by, acting interested and offering to help whoever needs it. Half of the caregivers are Asian—who’re better at this type of thing than Anglo-Saxons, Negroes, and regular Italian Jersey-ites. Everything inside’s sustainable, solar, green, run by sensors, paperless, or hands-off and is pricey beyond imagining. Loaner Priuses are available in an underground geo-heated garage. Wireless pill boxes inform residents when to take their meds. Computer games in the TVs chart residents’ cognitive baseline (if they can remember to play). There are even Internet cemeteries that invite residents to make videos of themselves, so loved ones can see Aunt Ola when she still had a brain. “Aging is a multidisciplinary experience,” the corporate brochure, Muses, wants applicants to know. Carnage Hill, following the theme, is thus a “living laboratory for Gray Americans.”

  I’m frankly surprised Ann’s practical-minded, Michigan-Dutch, country-club upbringing and genetic blueprint would let her stand one minute for all this baloney. Her father wouldn’t have and didn’t give a fart for retirement. Clarissa flew in from Arizona to help her mother move in, then went immediately back, referring to the whole “community” as strange and savage. Sally went to see Ann once in October, before the hurricane. (I feared an odorless, colorless bond would form between them—against me.) But Sally came home “thoughtful,” remarking it was like visiting someone in the home-decor department at Nordstrom. She couldn’t imagine—she’d said this before—how I could ever have fallen for Ann, much less married her. “You’re a very strange man,” she said and walked away to fix dinner, while I wondered what that meant. It was enough that she never went back for another visit.

  When I drive to see Ann, as I am tonight (once a month—no more—since I don’t consider it good for me), I usually find her in stagily effervescent spirits, with over-sharpened wits and “good” humor that often targets me as its goat. Her tremor has “progressed” to an almost undetectable circular motion at her chin point, her glacial eyes darting, her lips movable and actress-ish, her hands busy to animate herself and make her chin more like normal and still beautiful—which it is. Visiting the sick is really a priest’s line of work, not an ex-realtor’s. Priests have something to bring—ceremony, forgetfulness, a few stale, vaguely off-color jokes leading to forgiveness. I only have an orthopedic pillow.

  What I’ve attempted in my visits, and will try once again tonight, is to offer Ann what I consider my “Default Self”; this, in the effort to give her what I believe she most wants from me—bedrock truth. I do this by portraying for her the self I’d like others to understand me to be, and at heart believe I am: a man who doesn’t lie (or rarely), who presumes nothing from the past, who takes the high, optimistic road (when available), who doesn’t envision the future, who streamlines his utterances (no embellishments), and in all instances acts nice. In my view, this self plausibly represents one-half of the charmed-union-of-good-souls every marriage promises to convene but mostly fails to—as was true of ours long ago. I’m proceeding with this on the chance that long years of divorce, plus the onset of old age, and the value-added of fatal disease, will put at least a remnant of that charm back within our reach. We’ll see. (Sally Caldwell’s birthday, her sixty-fifth, is tomorrow, and later tonight, no matter what else happens, I’m spiriting her to Lambertville for a festive dinner, and later a renewal of our own charmed, second-marriage promises. I’m not long for Carnage Hill tonight.)

  Ann’s preoccupation with bedrock truth is, of course, what most divorced people are deviled by, especially if the leftover spouse is still around. Ann’s is basically what the ethicists at the Seminary call an essentialist point of view. Years ago, when our young son Ralph died, and I was for a period struck wondrous by life and bad luck and near-institutional-grade distraction, so that our marriage went crashing over the cliff, it became Ann’s belief that I essentially didn’t love her enough. Or else we would’ve stayed married.

  Imbedded in this belief is the eons-old philosopher’s quest for what’s real and what’s not, with marriage as the White Sands proving ground. If Ann (this is my view of her view) could just maneuver me around to conceding that yes, it’s true, I didn’t really love her—or if I did, I didn’t love her enough way back when—then she’d be able once and for all, before she dies, to know something true; one thing she can completely rely on: my perfidy. Her essence, of course, being perfidy’s opposite—bedrock goodness—since she believes she certainly loved me enough.

  Only, I don’t concede it. Which makes Ann irritable, and worry it and me like a sore that won’t heal. Though it would heal if she’d just stop worrying it.

  My view is that I loved Ann back in those long-ago vicious days all there was in me to love. If it wasn’t enough, at least she mined out the seam. What really was essential back then (I never like the sound of really; I’d be happy to evict it from the language along with many other words) was her own unquenchable need to be . . . what? Assured? Affirmed? Attended to? All of which she defines as love.

  Our poor son’s woeful death and my wondrous wanderings were both sad contributors to our marriage’s demise—no argument there. Guilty as charged. But it’s as much what was unquenchable and absent in her that’s left her, for all these years, with an eerie, nagging sensation of life’s falseness and failure to seat properly on bedrock. Possibly at heart Ann’s a Republican.

  Since she was diagnosed and moved herself to Carnage Hill, Ann has become a dedicated adept of all things mystical and holistic. In particular, she’s been driven to find out what “caused” her to come down with a dose of Parkinson’s. Plain bad luck and her old man’s busted-up genes don’t provide explanation enough. Here, I fit nicely into one theoretical construct: she got Parkinson’s because I never loved her. She hasn’t said this, but I know she’s thought it, and I show up expecting it each time.

  She does, however, specifically incriminate the hurricane, which she considers a “super-real change agent,” which it surely was. The blogs she reads (I’m not sure what a blog even is) are full of testimonials about things-events-changes-dislocations-slippages-into-mania-and-slippings-out which have all been “caused” by the storm. You wouldn’t necessarily know it was the cause, since conveniently there was no direct relationship—no straw follicles piercing telephone poles; no Boston Whalers found in trees twenty miles inland with their grinning, dazed owners inside but safe; no talking animals or hearing restored when before it’d been hopeless. But to these hurricane conspirators, the storm is responsible and will go on being responsible for any damn thing they need it to be. Since who’s to say they’re wrong?

  Agency is, of course, what Ann and all these zanies are seeking. She believes—she’s told me so—that the hurricane was a hurricane long before it was a hurricane; when it only seemed to be a careless zephyr off the sunny coast of Senegal, which, nonetheless, heated up, brewed around and found its essential self, then headed across the Atlantic to do much mischief. Somehow along the way, due to atmospheric force fields to which Ann was peculiarly susceptible—sitting, a widow in her condo, above the beach in Belmar, looking out at what she thought was a pancake sky and blemish-less horizon—the coming storm ignited within her personal nerve connectivity a big data dump that made her chin start vibrating and her fingers tingle, so that now they won’t be still. Ann believes the hurricane, which blew away the Mar-Bel condos like a paper sack, was a bedrock agent. A true thing. “We need to think about calamity in our own personal
terms, don’t we?” she’s said to me imperiously. (I’m not sure why so many people address me with sentences that end in question marks. Am I constantly being interrogated? Does this happen to everyone? I’ll tell you. The answer is no.)

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  Ann is not as scary as this makes her sound. Normally she’s a pert, sharp-eyed, athletic, sixty-nine-year-old-with-a-fatal-disease who you’d be happy to know and talk to about most anything—golf, or what a goofball Mitt Romney is. (The Romneys and the Dykstras were social acquaintances in the old, halcyon Michigan days, before Detroit rolled over and died.) This is the Ann I mostly encounter. Though we’re never all that far from bedrock matters. And she has a knack of getting me under her magnifying glass for the sun to bake me a while before I can exit back home to second-marriage deniability.

  The Default Self, my answer to all her true-thing issues, is an expedient that comes along with nothing more than being sixty-eight—the Default Period of life.

  Being an essentialist, Ann believes we all have selves, characters we can’t do anything about (but lie). Old Emerson believed the same. “. . . A man should give us a sense of mass . . . ,” etc. My mass has simply been deemed deficient. But I believe nothing of the sort. Character, to me, is one more lie of history and the dramatic arts. In my view, we have only what we did yesterday, what we do today, and what we might still do. Plus, whatever we think about all of that. But nothing else—nothing hard or kernel-like. I’ve never seen evidence of anything resembling it. In fact I’ve seen the opposite: life as teeming and befuddling, followed by the end.

  Therefore, where Ann’s concerned, to harmonize these dissonants, I mean to come before her portraying as close to human mass as I’m able—my Default Self—and hope that’s acceptable.