The Sportswriter

by Richard Ford

  I take the opportunity for some necessary phoning.

  First, a “touch base” call to Herb to firm up tomorrow’s plans. He is in laughing good spirits and invites us to have dinner with him and Clarice at a steak place in Novi, but I plead fatigue and prior commitments, and Herb says that’s great. He has become decidedly upbeat and shaken his glumness of the morning. (He is on pretty serious mood stabilizers, is my guess. Who wouldn’t be?) We hang up, but in two minutes Herb calls back to check whether he’s given me right directions for the special shortcut once we leave I–96. Since his injury, he says, he’s suffered mild dyslexia and gets numbers turned around half the time with some pretty hilarious results. “I do the same thing, Herb,” I say, “only I call it normal.” But Herb hangs up without saying anything.

  Next I call Henry Dykstra, X’s father, out in Birmingham. I have made it my policy to keep in touch with him since the divorce. And though things were strained and extremely formal between us while X’s and my affairs were in the lawyers’ hands, we have settled back since then into an even better, more frank relationship than we ever had. Henry believes it was Ralph’s death pure and simple that caused our marriage to go kaput, and feels a good measure of sympathy for me—something I don’t mind having, even if my own beliefs about these matters are a good deal more complex. I have also stayed an intermediary message-carrier between Henry and his wife, Irma, out in Mission Viejo, since she writes to me regularly, and I have let him know that I can be trusted to keep a confidence and to relay timely information which is often something surprisingly intimate and personal. “The old plow still works,” he once asked me to tell her, and I did, though she never answered that I know of. Families are very hard to break apart forever. I know that.

  Henry is a robust seventy-one and, like me, has not remarried, though he often makes veiled but conspicuous references to women’s names without explanation. My personal belief—seconded by X—is that he’s as happy as a ram living on his estate by himself and would’ve had it that way from the day X was born if he could’ve negotiated Irma. He is an industrialist of the old school, who worked his way up in the Thirties and has never really understood the concept of an intimate life, which I contend is not his fault, though X thinks otherwise and sometimes claims to dislike him.

  “We’re going broke, Franky,” Henry says, in a bad temper. “The whole damn country has its pants around its ankles to the unions. And we elected the S.O.B.s who’re doing it to us. Isn’t that something? Republicans? I wouldn’t give you a goddamned nickel for the first one they ever made. I stand somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, I guess is what that means.”

  “I’m not much up on it, Henry. It sounds tricky to me.”

  “Tricky! It isn’t tricky. If I wanted to steal and lay off everybody at my plant I could live for a hundred years, exactly the way I live now. Never leave the house. Never leave the chair! I came up a Reuther man, you know that, Frank. Lifelong. It’s these gangsters in Washington. All of them. They’re all goddamn criminals, want to run me in the ground. Retire me out of the gasket business. What’s going on at home, anyway? You still divorced?”

  “Things’re great, Henry. Today’s Ralph’s birthday.”

  “Is that so?” Henry does not like to talk about this, I know, but for me it is a day of some importance, and I don’t mind mentioning it.

  “I think he would’ve made a fine adult, Henry. I’m sure of that.”

  For a moment then there is stupefied emptiness in our connection while we think over lost chances.

  “Why don’t you come out here and we’ll get drunk,” Henry says abruptly. “I’ll have Lula fix duck en brochette. I killed the sons-of-bitches myself. We can call up some whores. I’ve got their private phone numbers right here. Don’t think I don’t call them, either.”

  “That’d be great, Henry. But I’m not alone.”

  “Got a shady lady with you yourself?” Henry guffaws.

  “No, a nice girl.”

  “Where’re you staying?”

  “Downtown. I have to go back tomorrow. I’m on business today.”

  “Okay, okay. Tell me why you think our golfing friend left you, Frank? Tell the truth. I can’t get it off my mind today, for some damn reason.”

  “I think she wanted her life put back in her own hands, Henry. There’s not much else to it.”

  “She always thought I ruined her life for men. It’s a hell of a thing to hear. I never ruined anybody’s life. And neither did you.”

  “I don’t really think she thinks that now.”

  “She told me she did last week! As late as that. I’m glad I’m old. It’s enough life. You’re here, then you’re not.”

  “I wasn’t always such a great guy, Henry. I tried hard but sometimes you can just fool yourself about yourself.”

  “Forget all that,” Henry says. “God forgave Noah. You can forgive yourself. Who’s your shady lady?”

  “You’d like her. Her name’s Vicki.” Vicki swings her smiling head around and holds up a glass of champagne to toast me.

  “Bring her out here, I’ll meet her. What a name. Vicki.”

  “Another visit, Henry. We’re on a short schedule this time.” Vicki goes back to watching the night fall.

  “I don’t blame you,” Henry says brashly. “You know, Frank, sometimes the fact of living with somebody makes living with them impossible. Irma and I were just like that. I sent her to California one January, and that was twenty years ago. She’s a lot happier. So you stay down there with Vicki whatever.”

  “It’s hard to know another person. I admit that.”

  “You’re better off assuming anybody’ll do anything, anytime, than that they won’t. That way you’re safe. Even my own daughter.”

  “I wish I could come out there and get drunk with you, Henry, that’s the truth. I’m glad we’re pals. Irma told me to tell you she’d seen a real good performance of The Fantasticks in Mission Viejo. And it made her think of you.”

  “Irma did?” Henry says. “What’s the fantastics?”

  “It’s a play.”

  “Well, that’s good then, isn’t it?”

  “Any messages to go back? I’ll probably write her next week. She sent me a birthday card. I could add something.”

  “I never really knew Irma, Frank. Isn’t that something?”

  “You were pretty busy making a living, though, Henry.”

  “She could’ve had boyfriends and I wouldn’t have even noticed. I hope she did. I certainly did. All I wanted.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about that. Irma’s happy. She’s seventy years old.”

  “In July.”

  “What about a message. Anything you want to say?”

  “Tell her I have bladder cancer.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I will have, if I don’t have something else first. Who cares anyway?”

  “I care. You have to think of something else, or I’ll think of something for you.”

  “How’s Paul and how’s Clarissa?”

  “They’re fine. We’re taking a car trip around Lake Erie this summer. And we’ll be stopping to see you. They’re already talking about it.”

  “We’ll go up to the U.P.”

  “There might not be time for that.” (I hope not.) “They just want to see you. They love you very much.”

  “That’s great, though I don’t know how they could. What do you think about the Maize and Blue, Franky?”

  “A powerhouse, is my guess, Henry. All the seniors are back, and the big Swede from Pellston’s in there again. I hear pretty awesome stories. It’s an impressive show out there.” This is the only ritual part of our conversations. I always check with the college football boys, particularly our new managing editor, a little neurasthenic, chain-smoking Bostonian named Eddie Frieder, so I can pass along some insider’s information to Henry, who never went to college, but is a fierce Wolverine fan nonetheless. It
is the only use he can think to make of my profession, and I’m not at all sure he doesn’t concoct an interest just to please me, though I don’t much like football per se. (People have some big misunderstandings about sportswriters.) “You’re going to see some fancy alignments in the defensive backfield this fall, that’s all I’ll say, Henry.”

  “All they need now is to fire that meathead who runs the whole show. He’s a loser, if you ask me. I don’t care how many games he wins.”

  “The players all seem to like him, from what I hear.”

  “What the hell do they know? Look. The means don’t always justify the end to me, Frank. That’s what’s wrong with this country. You ought to write about that. The abasement of life’s intrinsic qualities. That’s a story.”

  “You’re probably right, Henry.”

  “I feel hot about this whole issue, Frank. Sports is just a paradigm of life, right? Otherwise who’d care a goddamn thing about it?”

  “I know people can see it that way.” (I try to avoid that idea, myself.) “But it’s pretty reductive. Life doesn’t need a metaphor in my opinion.”

  “Whatever that means. Just get rid of that guy, Frank. He’s a Nazi.” Henry says this word to rhyme with snazzy in the old-fashioned way. “His popularity’s his biggest threat.” In fact, the coach in question is quite a good coach and will probably end up in the Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. He and Henry are almost exactly alike as human beings.

  “I’ll pass a word along, Henry. Why don’t you write a letter to The Readers Speak.”

  “I don’t have time. You do it. I trust you that far.”

  Light is falling outside the Pontchartrain now. Vicki sits in the shadows, her back to me, hugging her knees and staring out toward the Seagram’s sign upriver half a mile, red and gold in the twilight, while little Canuck houses light up like fireflies on a dark and faraway lake beach where I have been. I could want nothing more than to hug her now, feel her strong Texas back, and fall into a nestle we’d break off only when the room service waiter tapped at our door. But I can’t be sure she hasn’t lulled to sleep in the sheer relief of expectations met—one of life’s true blessings. In a hundred ways we could not be more alike, Vicki and I, and I miss her badly, though she is only twelve feet away and I could touch her shoulder in the dark with hardly a move (this is one of the prime evils of being an anticipator).

  “Frank, we don’t amount to much. I don’t know why we go to the trouble of having opinions,” Henry says.

  “It puts off the empty moment. That’s what I think.”

  “What the hell’s that? I don’t know what that is.”

  “Then you must’ve been pretty skillful all your life, Henry. That’s great, though. It’s what I strive for.”

  “How old will you be next birthday? You said you had a birthday.” For some reason Henry is gruff about this subject.

  “Thirty-nine, next week.”

  “Thirty-nine’s young. Thirty-nine’s nothing. You’re a remarkable man, Frank.”

  “I don’t think I’m that remarkable, Henry.”

  “Well no, you’re not. But I advise you, though, to think you are. I’d be nowhere if I didn’t think I was perfect.”

  “I’ll think of it as a birthday present, Henry. Advice for my later years.”

  “I’ll send you out a leather wallet. Fill it up.”

  “I’ve got some ideas that’ll do just as good as a fat wallet.”

  “Is this this Vicki trick you’re talking about?”

  “Right.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly. Everybody ought to have a Vicki in his life. Two’d even be better. Just don’t marry her, Frank. In my experience these Vickis aren’t for marrying. They’re sporting only.”

  “I’ve got to be going now, Henry.” Our conversations often tend this way, toward his being a nice old uncle and then, as if by policy, making me want to tell him to go to hell.

  “Okay. You’re mad at me now, I know it. But I don’t give a goddamn if you are. I know what I think.”

  “Fill your wallet up with that then, Henry, if you get my meaning.”

  “I get it. I’m not an idiot like you are.”

  “I thought you said I was pretty remarkable.”

  “You are. You’re a pretty remarkable moron. And I love you like a son.”

  “This is the point to hang up now, Henry. Thanks. I’m glad to hear that.”

  “Marry my daughter again if you want to. You have my permission.”

  “Good night, Henry. I feel the same way.” But like Herb Wallagher, Henry has already hung up on me, and never hears my parting words, which I sing off into the empty phone lines like a wilderness cry.

  Vicki has indeed gone to sleep in her chair, a cold stream of auto lights below, pouring up Jefferson toward the Grosse Pointes: Park, Farms, Shores, Woods, communities tidy and entrenched in midwestern surety.

  I am hungry as an animal now, though when I rouse her with a hand on her soft shoulder, ready for a crab soufflé or a lobsteak, amenable to à la carte up on the revolving roof, she wakes with a different menu in mind—one a fellow would need to be ready for the old folks’ home to pass up. (She has drunk all the champagne, and is ready for some fun.)

  She reaches and pulls me onto her chair so I’m across her lap and can smell the soft olive scent of her sleepy breath. Beyond the window glass in the starless drifting Detroit night an ore barge with red and green running lights aglow hangs on the current toward Lake Erie and the blast furnaces of Cleveland.

  “Oh, you sweet old sweet man,” Vicki says to me, and wiggles herself comfortable. She gives me a moist soft kiss on the mouth, and hums down in her chest. “I read someplace that if the Taurus tells you he loves you, you’re s’posed to believe it. Is that so?”

  “You’re a wonderful girl.”

  “Hmmmm. But …” She smiles and hums.

  I have a good handful of her excellent breast now, and what a wonderful bunch she is, a treasure trove for a man interested in romance. “Doesn’t that make you happy?”

  “Oh, that does. You know that. You’re the only one for me.” She is no part a dreamer, I know it, but a literalist from the word go, happy to let the world please her in the small ways it can (true of fewer and fewer people, women especially). Though it is probably not an easy thing to be here with me, in a strange glassy hotel in a cold and sinister town, strange as man to a mandrill, and to believe you are in love.

  “Oh, my my my,” she whispers.

  “Tell me what’ll make you happiest. That’s what I’m here for, and that’s the truth” (or most of it).

  “Well, don’t let’s sit on this ole chair all night and let that big ole granddaddy bed go to waste. I’m a firecracker just thinking about you. I didn’t think you’d ever get off that phone.”

  “I’m off now.”

  “You better look out then.”

  And then the cold room folds around us, and we become lost in simple nighttime love gloom, boats rafted together through a blear passage of small perils. A fair, tender Texas girl in a dark séance. Nothing could be better, more cordial than that. Nothing. Take this from a man who knows.

  Before my marriage ended but after Ralph died, in that wandering two-year period when I bought a Harley-Davidson, drove to Buffalo, taught at a college, suffered that dreaminess I have only lately begun to come out from under, and began to lose my close moorings with X without even noticing the slippage, I must’ve slept with eighteen different women—a number I don’t consider high, or especially scandalous or surprising under the circumstances. X, I’m sure, knew it, and in retrospect I can see that she did her best to accommodate it, tried to make me feel not so miserable by not asking questions, not demanding a strict accounting of my days when I would be off working in some sports mecca—a Denver or a St. Louis—expecting, I feel sure, that one day or other I would wake up out of it, as she thought she already had (but probably at this moment would be wi
lling to doubt, wherever she might be—safe I hope).

  None of this would’ve been so terrible, I believe, if I hadn’t reached a point with the women I was “seeing,” at which I was trying to simulate complete immersion—something anyone who travels for a living knows is a bad idea. But when times got bad, I would, for example, find myself after a game alone in the pressbox of some concrete and steel American sports palace. Often as not there would be a girl reporter finishing up her late running story (my eyes were sharpened for just such stragglers), and we would end up having a few martinis in some atmospheric-panoramic bar, then driving out in my renter to some little suburban foot-lit lanai apartment with rattan carpets, where a daughter waited—a little Mandy or Gretchen—and no hubby, and where before I knew it the baby would be asleep, the music turned low, wine poured, and the reporter and I would be plopped in bed together. And bango! All at once I was longing with all my worth to be a part of that life, longing to enter completely into that little existence of hers as a full (if brief) participant, share her secret illusions, hopes. “I love you,” I’ve heard myself say more than once to a Becky, Sharon, Susie or Marge I hadn’t known longer than four hours and fifteen minutes! And being absolutely certain I did; and, to prove it, loosing a barrage of pryings, human-interest questions—demands, in other words, to know as many of the whys and whos and whats of her life as I could. All of it the better to get into her life, lose that terrible distance that separated us, for a few drifting hours close the door, simulate intimacy, interest, anticipation, then resolve them all in a night’s squiggly romance and closure. “Why did you go to Penn State when you could’ve gone to Bryn Mawr?” I see, “What year did your ex-husband actually get out of the service?” Hmmm. “Why did your sister get along better with your parents than you did?” Makes sense. (As if knowing anything could make any difference.)