Let Me Be Frank With You

by Richard Ford

  The vision of a Default Self is one we’ve all wrestled with even if we’ve failed to find it and gone away frustrated. We’ve eyed it hungrily, wishing we could figure it out and install it in our lives, like a hair shirt we could get cozy in. Though bottom line, it’s not that different from a bedrock self, except it’s our creation, rather than us being its. In the first place, where Ann’s concerned, I come here sporting my Default Self, wanting to put her at ease and let her feel right about things. She’s never going to discover she’s been wrong about me all these years. But she could be more comfortable with me and so could I. Second, the Default Self allows me to try not to seem the cynical Joe she believes me to be and won’t quit trying to prove. Trying to cobble up the appearance of a basic self that makes you seem a better, solider person than someone significant suspects you are—that can count. It counts as goodwill, and as a draw-down on cynicism, even if you fail—and you don’t always—which is the real charmed union marriage should offer its participants. Third, the Default Self is just plain easier. As I’ve said, its requirements are minimal and boiled down in a behavioristic sense. And fourth—which is why it’s the tiniest bit progressive—there’s always the chance I’ll have an epiphany (few as these are) and discover that due to this stripping away and Ann’s essentialist rigor, she’ll be proved right; that I do have a mass and a character peeping reluctantly out from behind the arras like Cupid—which is not a bad outcome at all.

  The risk of this, of course, is that if I’m found to have a self and character, Ann will decide I was even more false and uncaring when we were married, and loathe me even more for concealing myself—like Claude Rains, unwinding his bandages to disclose the invisible man. Worse than a mere nothing. Though I would argue that I would be an invisible man who loved Ann Dykstra all there was in me to love, even if she never really believed I was there. In the end, it’s hard to win against your ex-wife, which is not new news.

  A GIGANTIC DOUGLAS FIR, A-SPARKLE AND A-SPANGLE with a gold star on top and positioned with geometric precisioning, shines out through the great beveled-glass doors of Carnage Hill. All other side windows are alight with electric candles, like an old New England church. I’ve steered over to the shadowy side lot to avoid the venal valet boys, who go through your glove box, steal your turnpike change, eat your mints, change the settings on your radio, and drive your car to their girlfriends’—then expect a big tip when they return your car warm and odorous.

  The freezing rain, when I get out, has become hard, popping snow pellets, stinging my cheeks and denting my Sonata hood and making it easy to fall down and bust my ass. Back down the hill, through the empty trees toward Mullica Pond, late-day light is surprisingly visible in the low western sky—a streak of yellow above a stratum of baby blue. New Jersey’s famous for its discordant skies. “The devil’s beating his wife,” my father used to say when rain fell from a sunny firmament. It reminds me, though, that it’s still before six and not midnight. My happy birthday dinner with Sally still lies ahead.

  Carrying Ann’s cumbersome pillow under-arm in its plastic sleeve, I hurry past the smirking valet twerps, on into the big boisterous, bright-lit foyer with the dazzling humongous Christmas fir scratching the cathedral ceiling, and where all is festive and in a commotion.

  The chief selling point of Carnage Hill and all such high-end entrepôts isn’t that sick, old, confused, lonely and fed up don’t exist and aren’t major pains; but, given that they are, it’s better here. In fact, it’s not only better than anywhere you could be under those circumstances, it’s better than anywhere you’ve ever been, so that circumstances quit mattering. In this way, being sick to death is like a passage on a cruise ship where you’re up on the captain’s deck, eating with him and possibly Engelbert Humperdinck, and no one’s getting Legionnaires’ or being cross about anything. And you never set sail or arrive anywhere, so there’re no bad surprises or disappointments about the ports of call being shabby and alienating. There aren’t any ports of call. This is it.

  Tonight there are tons of Christmas visitors strewn through the public rooms and toward the back out of sight—grandkids teasing grandpaw, married duos checking on the surviving parent, wives visiting staring husbands, a priest sitting with parishioners, offering up Advent benedictions, plus a pitch to leave it all to the church. There’s a cheery murmur of voices and soft laughter and dishes tinkling and oo’s and ahh’s, along with a big fire roaring in a giant fireplace. It could be Yellowstone. A standing sign says a “book group” is meeting in the library, led by a Haddam High English teacher. They’re discussing Dickens—what else? I can make out a herd of wheeled walkers and oxy-caddies clustered close around a holly-decked lectern, the aged owners trying to hear better. A wine-and-cheese social’s being set up by the big picture window overlooking a pond and another Christmas tree afloat on a little island. Cinnamon/apple-cider odor thickens the atmosphere. Floors are polished. Chandeliers dusted. The Muzak’s giving out Andy, singing hot-digitty, dog-digitty . . . I always feel I’ve shrunk two jacket sizes when I come inside—either because I feel “at one” with the wizened residents, or because I loathe it and aim to be as invisible as Claude Rains.

  I am of course known here. I often spy old realty clients, though I can usually swerve and not be seen and get down the corridor of the Beth Wessel, where Ann’s “flat” is, overlooking yet another decorative pond with real ducks. Though sometimes I’m trapped by Ann’s faux beau, the Philly flatfoot—Buck—who lies in wait for a chance to yak about “Miss Annie” and his stiffy, and what it sounds like when he takes a drug-aided “major whiz” in the visitor’s john (like “a fuckin electric drill,” he said last time). I’m hoping with stealth to miss them all.

  Though on the good side, I’m relieved finally just to be here. My pelvic pain has all but ceased, and my neck doesn’t ache. Sally, who’s performing valiant grief-counseling services over in South Mantoloking, attending to hurricane victims who’ve lost everything, told me last week she’s begun feeling “grief undertow,” the very woe she’s working hard to rid her clients of. We were lying in bed early one morning, listening to heat tick in the house. Expectancy, I told her, was the hardest part of most difficult duties—from a prostate biopsy to a day in traffic court; and since she was giving of herself so devotedly, the least she could do was put it out of her mind when she was home. The worst dreams I ever had were always worse than the coming events that inspired them. Plus, bad dreams, like most worries, never tell us anything we didn’t know and couldn’t cope with fine when the lights are on. I should heed my own advice.

  “Hi,” a smiling refrigerator of a woman in a large green sports coat says (to me). She is suddenly, unexpectedly, extremely present just as I’m halfway past the big tree piled around with phony gifts, heading for the entry of the Beth Wessel. Hot-diggity, dog-diggity, Boom! “Do you have a friend or loved one you’re here to visit?” the refrigerator says, happy, welcoming, vividly glad to see me. She’s wearing beige trousers, a Santa necktie, and form-fitting, black orthopedic shoes that mean she’s on her feet all day and her dogs are probably killing her. She is security—but nothing says so. Though at her size, she could drag the whole, gigantic blazing Christmas tree—assuming it was on fire—all the way to the Great Road by herself. She’s not Asian that I can tell.

  I am not known to her. Which means she’s new, or else there’s been a “problem” in the Community—possibly an unwanted “guest”—for which measures have had to be taken. I will not be a problem.

  “I do,” I say. I give her my own big smile that wants to say that a whole world of things have happened before she came to work today, and it’s no fault of hers, but I’m a friendly so let me get on with my piddly-ass business—my pillow, etc.

  “Who would that be?” she says, as if she can’t wait to find out. Big smile back—bigger than mine. Likely she’s a local phys-ed teacher picking up holiday hours before starting two-a-days with the girls’ hoops squad over in Hightstown. Wi
de square face. Big laughing comical mouth. Though tiny, suspicious eyes and cell-block hair.

  “Ann Dykstra,” I say. “Down in the Wessel.”

  “Miss Annie,” she sings, as if the two of them have been friends forever. Conceivably she’s De Tocqueville faculty—Ann’s replacement with the golf squad.

  A large man with his back to me, inching nearer the wine and cheese layout—which is not yet all the way set up—is Buck Pusylewski. I can see the Grisham novel and the Dave Garroway horn-rims on top of his head where his greasy hair will smudge them. I’m nervous he’s going to spot me and come over.

  “Whatcha got in there,” the big security woman says. She pokes a finger right into the plastic sleeve of the ortho-pillow, making it crackle.

  “Pillow,” I say. “I’m bringing it.”

  A big I’m-with-you-on-this-one smile. “A Christmas gift,” she says jovially. Everything makes her happy. People are milling nearer us. Eyes are darting my way. They know who she is. But not me, now. What’s the problem? What’s going on? Who’s he? What’s that? “These are awesome. I’ve got one.” She’s agreeing about the pillow. “They really ease the neck pain.”

  “My wife has Parkinson’s.” Though she’s not technically my wife.

  “Well, we all know that,” the security amazon says, as if Parkinson’s was a condition anybody would want. “Lemme just give you a little squeeze.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Not you, you old charmer. The pillow. Lemme give her a little poofety-poof.”

  Obviously I’m getting no farther without submitting. It’s not usually like this. I offer up the heavier-than-you’d-expect, plastic-encased pillow, which hasn’t been opened since I bought it yesterday at the Bed Bath & Beyond at the Haddam Mall. Unwelcome Indonesian spores perhaps wait inside its factory-sealed sleeve, intent on mayhem. I wouldn’t have one of these things.

  The security woman hefts the pillow like a medicine ball, brings it to the side of her big face as if she was listening for something inside—an Uzi or a sarin gas micro-cylinder. She squeezes it like a dog toy. It makes no noise. Most terrorists don’t have ex-wives with Parkinson’s whom they visit once a month. Though who knows?

  “O-kay!” She prinks her eyebrows as if we’re both in on something. She wakes up grinning, is my guess. She has alarmingly large hands. And then of course I catch on—I’m always the last to notice such things. “She’s” not a “she” but a “he.” She’s a Doug who’s become a Doris, an Artie an Amy—now free, thanks to an enlightened electorate, to assume her rightful place in the growing health-care industry, whereas before he was dying inside selling farm machinery in Duluth. My heart goes out to her/him. My life is piffles by comparison. I wish I could make Ann’s pillow a present to big Amy, and head to Sally’s birthday dinner, having done the good deed the season aspires to—instead of the deed I’m destined for.

  The big galoot hands me back the pillow as if she’s used to strangers taking just about this long to wise up to the whole gender deal, but is happy to have it copacetic between us now. She used to be me. She knows what that’s all about—not as great as it’s cracked up to be. Otherwise she’d still be there.

  “You must be Frank.” Amy-Doris for the first time trades in the bozo grin for a mulling stare, making her look like nothing as much as a farm machinery salesman, only with breasts, lipstick and a beard shadow down her jawline.

  “Right,” I say, as if I’m the one in drag. Hot-diggity, dog-diggity . . .

  “Annie talks about you sometimes,” A-D says. Her mulling look means I’ve long ago been determined to be in the wrong about many things, and it’s too late to fix any of them. It’s all just sad, sad, etc. Big Doug was probably a flop selling Caterpillars.

  “What does she say?” I can’t keep from asking, though I don’t want to know. Boom! What you do to me!

  “She says you’re okay. Sometimes you’re kind of an asshole. But that’s pretty rare.” Doug is just Doug now. We’re hombre-to-hombre. Perhaps his surgery’s not quite done and he’s still in the stage where you wake up not knowing who the hell’s living in your skin.

  “That’s probably true,” I say, wedging the pillow back under my elbow. Buck, I see, is treating himself to a glass of the Malbec, getting ahead of when the book-clubbers let out. Possibly he and Miss Annie have plans for later. In the distant public rooms people are applauding. The sounds of pure delight. Granny Bea’s just opened her big present and been surprised as a betsy bug on a cabbage leaf.

  “Hard not to be who you are,” big Doug observes, nodding. He should know. She should know.

  “I keep trying to do better.”

  “Well, you have to.” Big smile again. “You have yourself a merry one, Franky. Knock yourself out.”

  “You have one, too.” Franky.

  “Oh, I’m on my way to that. Don’t worry about me.” Something cheerlessly sexual’s crept into his/her voice. Though no more than with most things we say, do, think about and long to be true. Poor devil. But I’ve cleared customs now, am free to go. Free to find my way to the genuine woman who once was my wife.

  BUCK, BY AN EXCELLENT STROKE, HAS NOT NOTICED me. An encounter with him would zero out my Default Self before it even had its chance. The Beth Wessel corridor, which I now enter, is like a swank hallway in the Carlyle. No hint of infirmity or decline. Nothing wheelchair width, no wall grips, no SOS phones or defibrillator paks. Illness abides elsewhere. The walls are rich, shadowed wainscot and with an aroma of saddle leather, the above-part done in hand-painted murals of the Luxembourg, the Marais, the Seine and the Place des Vosges. Ann’s told me these are all re-done yearly and there’s a competition. Brass sconces add tasteful low-light accents. The carpet’s gray with a green undertone you don’t notice and lush as a sheep meadow. Every few feet there’s a framed, spot-lit photograph—a Doisneau, a Cartier-Bresson, an Atget—or at least their imitators. Sounds are as hushed as deep space. You expect the next person you see to be Meryl Streep in a Mets cap and shades, making a discreet exit out onto a side street off the Boulevard St. Germain—not the Great Road in Haddam Township.

  Ann’s flat is at the end. 8-B, though there’s no 8-B on the door. Doris-Doug will already have announced me by wireless means—possibly a message transmitted direct into Ann’s deep-cranial band width. There are, of course, cameras, though I can’t see them.

  I’m ready to ring the bell, but the door opens before my finger can touch the brass-and-wood buzzer button. Ann Dykstra stands suddenly before me. It’s ten before six. I know where my children are. They’re grown up and far away. Thank goodness.

  “I’ve just been watching the local news about these poor hurricane people,” Ann’s saying, without a hello, a hug, a peck, just stepping back as if I was the grocery boy with sacks and can find my own way to the kitchen. “It just doesn’t end, does it?” I take one step back, then come forward inside, and have to fight off pantomiming that it’s cold as Alaska outside her door, and I’m lucky to be inside for warmth and a fire. There’s no fire, and I’m not cold, or lucky. I’m simply here, with no reason to be except this ridiculous, crinkly, clear-plastic sack with its lifesaving pillow, which I’ve been instructed to fetch and now have done. “No, it doesn’t,” I say. “It’s cold outside.”

  “I guess your Sally’s over there and seeing it firsthand, isn’t she?” Ann regularly refers to Sally as my Sally as if there were hundreds of identical Sallys, and I just happen to have one. It could seem friendly but isn’t. It makes Ann seem like my grandmother. “Those poor, poor people. They have nothing left. And they’re paying property taxes on homes that’ve washed away. I’m lucky I’m not there anymore.”

  “You are lucky.” Ann’s living room’s like a crisp stage set, and I feel too large to be in it. (Five minutes ago I felt too small.) I also feel like I don’t smell good—like sweat or onions—and that my feet have cow shit on them and my hands are grimy. Ann was always a neatnik and has become more of one since she got Parki
nson’s and moved to smaller quarters. Feng Shui rules all here—promoting tastefully optimum healing propensities. No metal lampshades (too yang). Tree energy wall colors—for calm. The bed, which I’ve never seen and never will, has its headboard oriented north to conquer insomnia (Ann’s told me). What Feng Shui has on its mind about constipation, I don’t know. The living room has a big mullioned picture window with a single candle facing the flood-lit woods and the duck pond (good yin). Tiny lights from the birch-bark canoe institute prickle invitingly through the tree limbs. The apartment looks like a model home in The AARP Journal. Pale green couch. Bamboo floors. Floral-print side chairs. Lots of clean, shining surfaces with plants, ceramic fragrant-liquid containers, and a fishless aquarium—small but new, and everything in its ordinal position to placate the gods by making the whole space as uncomfortable and un-lived-in as possible. I know there are also tiny soundless sensors all around. These track Ann’s movements, tabulate her steps, record her heartbeats, check her blood pressure and brain functions, possibly digitize her relative empathy levels depending on stimuli—me in this case. Low. All are S.O.P. for the “Living Laboratory for Gray Americans Plan” she’s opted for—and that drove down the purchase price. She can check any of these by accessing her “life profile” on the TV—though I can’t see a TV. Ann was always a devotée of the Golf Channel. But golf on TV may be bad yang.

  I set the crinkly pillow sack down on one of the floral prints and am instantly sure I shouldn’t. Pillows on chairs, plastic on textiles, plastic on anything conceivably dilutes the chi.

  “Did you see Buck?” Ann closes the door with a clunk. Buck the flatfoot.

  “I didn’t,” I say, not entirely literally.

  “He was wanting to brainstorm with you about buying on The Shore now that prices are whatever they are. Less, I guess now.”

  “Less’s not really the word for it. I retired from that line of work, though.” So much for those poor, poor people.