by Richard Ford
Mike’s clammed up since I scolded him about being mindful. We have yet to develop a fully operational language for conflict in the months he’s been with me. And by being scolded, he’s possibly been tossed back onto painful life lessons—the telemarketers’ bullpen with its cynical Bengali middle-management bullies; ancient, happy-little-brown-man stereotypes; muscular-McCain-war-hero imagery and plucky Horatio Algerish immigrant models—all roles he’s contemplated in his odyssey to here but that don’t really cohere to make a rational world.
Though I don’t mind if Mike’s being pushed out of his comfort zone. He’s like every other Republican: nervous about commitment; fearful of future regret; never saw a risk he wouldn’t like somebody else to take. Benivalle may have done his dreams brusque disservice by putting his own little domestic Easter egg on display. Since what he’s done is make Mike stop, think and worry—bad strategy if your customer’s a Buddhist. Mike’s now being forced to consider his own Big Fear—the blockade that has to be broken through sometime in life or you go no further. (I used to think mine was death. Then cancer taught me it wasn’t.)
Mike now has to figure out if his big fear is the terror of going on ahead (into the mansioning business) or the terror of not; if he’s ready to buy into the proposition most Americans buy into and that says “You do this shit until either you’re rich or you’re dead”; or if he’s more devoted to his old conviction that dying a millionaire is dying like a wild animal, attachment leads to disappointment and pain, etc. In other words, is he really a Republican, or is this dilemma the greening of Mike? Flattening pretty cornfields for seven-figure mega-mansions isn’t, after all, really helping people in the way that assisting them to find a modest home they want—and that’s already there—helps them. Benivalle’s idea, of course, is more the standard “we build it, they come,” which Mike uncomfortably sniffed back in Toms River: If we build Saturns, they will want to drive them; if we build mini-crepe grills, they will want to eat mini-crepes; if we invent Thanksgiving, they will try to be thankful (or die in the process).
My Realty-Wise office sits tucked between a Chicago-Style Pizza that previously occupied my space, and the Sea-Clift Own-Make Candies, that’s only open summers and whose owners live in Marathon. The pizza place is lighted inside. The tricolor flag still leans out from its window peg over the sidewalk (Italy is the official kingdom-in-exile on the Shore). Bennie, the Filipino owner, is alone inside, putting white dough mounds back in the cold box and closing down the oven until Saturday, when everybody will crave a slice of “Kitchen Sink.” Some days, when the humidity’s high, my office smells like rich puttanesca sauce. I can’t tell if this inclines clients more, or less, to buy beach property, though when they aren’t serious enough to get in the car and go have a look at something up their alley, I often later see them next door, staring out Bennie’s front window, a slice on a piece of wax paper, happy as clams for having exercised self-control.
Mike’s silver Infiniti, with a REALTORS ARE PEOPLE TOO sticker on the back bumper and a Barnegat Lighthouse license plate, sits in front of my white, summery-looking, cubed building, which announces REALTY-WISE in frank gold-block lettering on its front window like an old-time shirtsleeve lawyer’s office. Home-for-sale snapshots are pinned to a corkboard that’s visible inside the door. In general, my whole two-desk set-up is decidedly no-frills when compared to the Lauren-Schwindell architect’s showplace on Seminary, which shouted Money! Money! Money! Nothing along this stretch of the Shore compares to Haddam, which is good, in my estimation. Here at this southern end of Barnegat Neck, life is experienced less pridefully, more like an undiscovered seacoast town in Maine, and no less pleasantly—except in summer, when crowds rumble and surge. When I came over with my broker’s license in ’92, seeking a place to set up shop, all my competitors gave me to understand that everyone was collegial down here, there was plenty of business (and money) to go around for someone who wanted not to work too hard but keep on his toes (handle summer rentals, own a few apartments, do the odd appraisal, share listings, back up a competitor if things got tight). I purchased old man Barber Featherstone’s business when Barber opted for managed care near his daughter’s in Teaneck, and everybody came by and said they were glad I was here—happy to have a realty veteran instead of a young cut-throat land shark. I took over Barber’s basic colors—red and white (no motto or phony Ivy League crest)—substituted Realty-Wise for Featherstone’s Beach Exclusives, and got to work. Anything fancier wouldn’t have helped and eventually would’ve made everyone hate my guts and be happy to cut me off at the knees whenever they had the chance—and there are always chances. As a result, in eight years I’ve made a bundle, missed the stock market boom—and the correction—and hardly worked a lick.
The WE’RE OPEN sign’s been left hanging inside the glass door since yesterday, and in the shadowy interior, where Mike and I sit at two secondhand metal desks I got at St. Vincent de Paul to make us not look like sharpsters but doers, the red pin light’s blinking on the ceiling smoke alarm. Of course I have to piss again, though not frantically. Later in the day the urge is worse. Mornings and early afternoons, I often don’t even notice. I can use the office facilities rather than wait for home (which could get tricky).
Mike is still aswarm with thoughts. He’s stuffed another cigarette out the window and breathed a deep sigh of anti-Buddhist dismalness. His Marlboro and garlic, and my pissed-on shoes, have left my car smelling terrible.
There’s no good reason to resume our conversation about mindfulness, glasses of yak milk, what we originate and what we don’t. I have no investment in it and was only performing my role as devil’s advocate. In my view, Mike is made for real estate the way some people are made to be veterinarians and others tree surgeons. He may have found his niche in life but hates to admit it for reasons I’ve already expressed. I would hate to lose him as my associate—no matter how unusual an associate he is. I might arrange to have a Sponsor visit him, some stranger who could tell him what I’d tell him.
Still, old Emerson says, power resides in shooting the gulf, in darting to an aim. The soul becomes. My soul, though, has become tired of this day.
“You’re not under any big time constraint in all this, are you?” I say this to the steering wheel without looking at him. The interior instruments glow green. The heat’s on, the car’s at idle. “I’d be suspicious if there was some kind of rush. You know?”
“House prices went up forty percent last year. Money’s cheap. That won’t last very long.” He is morose. “When Bush gets in, the minority program’ll dry up. Clinton would keep it. So would Gore.” He sighs again deeply. He dislikes Clinton for uncoupling China trade from human rights, but of course would fare better with the Democrats—like the rest of us.
“Does Benivalle like Bush?”
“He likes Nader. His father was a lefty.” Mike absently pulls on his undersized earlobe. A gesture of resignation.
“Benivalle’s green? I thought they were all cops. Or crooks.”
“You can’t generalize.”
Though generalization’s my stock-and-trade. And I like Benivalle less for getting in bed with the back-stabbing Nadir. “Isn’t it odd that you like Bush, and he’s killing off your minority whozzits. And you’re thinking of going into business with a liberal.”
“I don’t like Bush. I voted for him.” Mike impatiently unsnaps his seat belt. He has ventured valiantly forth as a brave citizen and come back an immigrant vanquished by uncertainty. Too bad. “I feel regret,” he says solemnly.
“You haven’t done anything bad,” I say, and attempt a smile denoting confidence.
“It doesn’t attach to doing.” And he’s suddenly smiling, himself, though I’m sure he’s not happy.
“You just got out beyond your stated ideological limits,” I say. “You can always come back. Devil’s advocate’s just a figure of speech. My belief system hasn’t defeated your belief system.”
“No. I’m sure it hasn’t.
” Mike frames his words as a verdict.
“There you go.” Ours is a rare conversation for two men as different as we are to have in a car, though I wish it could be over so I could grab a piss.
“I understand you think this is not a good thing to do,” he says.
“I don’t want to keep you from anything but harm,” I say. “You’ll just have to understand what you understand.”
Bennie, the pizzeria owner, has taken his Italian flag inside and is letting himself out his front door, locking up using a ring of keys as big as a bell clapper. He has his white apron draped over his arm for at-home laundering. He’s a small, crinkly-haired, mustachioed man and looks more Greek than Filipino. He’s wearing flip-flops, a red shirt and black Bermudas that reveal white ham-hock thighs. He glances at Mike and me, shadowy male presences in an idling Suburban, gives us a momentary stare, possibly puts us down for queers—though he should recognize me—then finishes his lock-up and walks away toward his white delivery van farther down the block.
Mike says he feels regret, but what he feels is lonely—though it’s logical to confuse the two. He’ll probably never feel true regret, which is outside his belief system. When he gets back to his empty house in Lavallette, he’ll turn up the heat, call his pining wife in the Amboys, speak lovingly of reconciling, talk sweetly to his kids, meditate for an hour, connect some significant dots and pretty soon start to feel better about things. As an immigrant, he knows loneliness can be dealt with symptomatically. I could ask him over for Thanksgiving. But I’ve made a big-enough mess with Ann, and don’t trust my instincts. Anything can be made worse.
In our silence, my mind strays to Paul again, already on his soldiering way over from the Midwest, his new “other” manning the map under the dim interior lights so there’s no need to stop. (Why do so many things happen in cars? Are they the only interior life left?) I wonder where exactly they are at this moment. Possibly just passing Three Mile Island in his old, shimmying Saab? I already sense his commotional presence via consubstantive telemetry across the dwindling miles.
Mike’s small, lined, smiling face waits outside my car door. Cold ocean fog swirls behind him, giving me a shudder. I’ve briefly zoned again. Oh my, oh me.
“Suffering, I think, doesn’t happen without a cause.” He nods consolingly in at me, as if I was the one in the pickle.
“I don’t necessarily look at things that way,” I say. “I think a lot of shit just happens to you. If I were you, I wouldn’t think so much about causes. I’d think more about results. You know? It’s my advice.”
His smile vanishes. “They’re always the same,” he says.
“Whatever. You’re a good real estate agent. I’d be sorry to lose you. This is the fastest-growing county in the East. Household income’s up twenty-three percent. There’s money to be made. Selling houses is pretty easy.” I could also tell him there’d be virtually zero Buddhists in Haddam to be buddies with—just Republicans by the limo-full, who wouldn’t associate with him, not even the Hindus, once they found out he’s a developer. He’d end up feeling sad about life and moving away. Whereas here, he wouldn’t. I don’t say that, though, because I’m out of advice. “I’ll be in in the morning,” I say, all business. “Why don’t you take the day and think about things. I’ll steer the ship.”
“Sure. Good. Okay.” He goes reaching in his trousers for his keys. “Have a happy Thanksgiving.” He puts the accent on the giving, not on the thanks as we longer-term Americans do.
“Okay.” I sound and feel vapid.
“Do you explode fireworks?” His car lights flash on by themselves.
“Different holiday,” I say. “This is just eating and football.”
“I can’t always keep things straight.” He looks at me inside my cold cockpit and seems delighted. A minor holiday miscue lets him feel momentarily less American (in spite of his lapel-pin flag) and makes his other errors, failures and uncertainties feel more forgivable, just parts of those things that can’t be helped. It’s not a wrong way to feel—less responsible for everything. Mike closes the door, taps the glass with his pinkie ring and gives me a silly, grinning half bow with a thumbs-up, to which I involuntarily (and ridiculously) give him a half bow back, which delights him even more and into another thumbs-up but no bow. I am the hollow, echoing vessel between the two of us now. I have my patience and forbearance for my ride home, but as this long day of events comes to its close, I have little more to show.
Part 2
7
At 3:00 a.m., I’m suddenly awake, which is not unusual these days. A late-night call to the toilet, or else something from the day ahead or the day past, abruptly breaking through the tent of sleep to invade my brain and set my heart to beating fast. Sleep’s a gossamer thing for over-fifties, even women. Normally, I can breathe deep and slow, adjust my hearing to the hiss of the sea, project my mind into the oceany dark and am asleep without realizing I’m not awake. Though when that doesn’t avail—and sometimes it doesn’t—I seek repose by editing my list of prospective pallbearers, noting a crucial addition or deletion, depending on my mood, followed by a review of who I intend to leave what to when the day comes, then reviewing all the cars I’ve owned, restaurants I’ve eaten in and hotels I’ve slept in during my fifty-five years of ordinary life. And if none of these performs, I inventory all the acceptable ways of committing suicide (without scaring the shit out of myself—all cancer patients do this). And if nothing else works—sometimes that happens, too—I file through the names of every woman I ever made love to in my entire life (surprisingly more than I’d have thought), at which point sleep comes in half a minute, since I’m not really very interested, whereas with the others, I sort of am. Clarissa has told me that when sleep eludes her, she recites a South-Sea Fijian mantra, which goes: “The shark is not your demon, but the final resting place of your soul.” This I’d find disturbing, so that if it ever did put me to sleep, it would give me a bad dream, which would then wake me up and I’d be stuck till morning.
My room now is cold and nearly lightless but for the red numerals on the clock, the ocean sighing toward daylight, still hours on. I’ve been dreaming I rescued a stranger from the sea outside my house and have been declared a hero (a sure sign of needing rescue). I awoke to hear the sound of my own name whispered in the night air.
“Frank-ee,” I hear, “Frank-ee.” My heart’s racing like Daytona, my fingers and arms up to my shoulder webby and immobilized with slowed blood flow and dormancy. Normally, I maintain the recommended Dead Crusader position—flat on my back, feet together, wrists crossed on my chest as though a sword is in hand. But I’m surprisingly on my stomach and may possibly have been swimming in the sheets. My neck aches from my Bob Butts tussle. I’ve popped a sweat like an athlete on a jog. “Frank-ee.” Then I hear boisterous laughing. “Haw, haw, haw.” A door slamming. Splat.
When I arrived home last night from Haddam, a sports car, a shiny, pale blue, underslung Austin-Healey 1000, sat beside Sally’s LeBaron convertible in the driveway, its motor warm (I checked). Green-numeral LIVE FREE OR DIE license plates. A red Gore sticker was half torn off its back bumper. Later, I climbed the stairs to my bedroom and heard Clarissa’s radio, low and soft, tuned to the all-night jazz station in Philadelphia—Arthur Lyman playing “Jungle Flute” on a piano. A bottle lip clinked against a glass rim, a hushed man’s (not a very young man’s) voice was saying, humorously, “Not so bad. I wouldn’t say. Not so bad.” Silence opened as the two took in my footfalls and my door squeaking and a cough I felt required to cough, if only to say, Yes, things’re fine. Fine, fine. Things’re all fine. Then another tinkle-clink, Clarissa’s languorous laugh, the word father casually spoken in a low but not too low voice, and then silence.
But now the door splat outside the house. My name whispered, then “Haw, haw, haw.” Clearly, it’s my neighbors.
Next door on Poincinet Road, eighteen feet from my south wall, my immediate neighbors are the Feensters, Nick and Dr
illa. I sold them their house in ’97. Nick is a former Bridgeport firefighter who became a millionaire recycling old cathode-ray tubes, and then to his shock won the Connecticut lottery. Not the big one. But the big-enough one. He and Drilla had been weekenders in Sea-Clift, plus two set-aside weeks in August, consigning to me their pink, white-trimmed Florida-style bungalow on Bimini Street to rent for a fortune, May to October, which is our season. But when the big money rolled in, they sold the pink bungalow, Nick quit work, they pulled up stakes in Bridgeport and let me put them into #5 Poincinet Road—a modern, white-painted, many-faceted, architect’s dream/nightmare with metal-banistered miradors, copper roof, decks for every station of the sun, lofty, mirrored triple-panes open on the sea, imported blue Spanish tile flooring (heated), intercoms and TVs in the water closets, in-wall vacuums and sound system, solar panels, a burglar system that rings in Langley, built-in pecky cypress everythings, even a vintage belted Excalibur that the prior owners, a gay banking couple with an adopted child who couldn’t stand the damp, just threw in for the million eight, full-boat, as a housewarming present. (Nick sold it for a mint.)