by Richard Ford
“Ted, I don’t know what to say.” The noisy eaters in the next room have started back tink-tink-tinking their flatware, mouths full of pancakes, blabbing about how the berm-improvements work between here and Rochester’ll “impact” on driving times to the Falls. Suddenly my chill is over and I’m hot as a sauna bath.
“You might just feel happy for me, Frank, instead of suing me. I’ll probably be dead in a year. So it’s good I sold my house. I can go live with my son now.”
“I really just wanted to sell it for you, Ted.” I am made lightheaded at the unexpected arousal of death. “I’ve got it sold, in fact,” I say faintly.
“You’ll find them another house, Frank. I didn’t think they much liked it here.”
I push my fingertips hard onto the stack of year-old Annie Get Your Gun tickets. Someone, I see, has slid the copy of Achieve Super Marital Sex underneath the stack, with old Mr. Pleasure Unit’s happy face peeking upward. “They liked it a lot,” I say, thinking about Betty Hutton in a cowboy hat. “They were cautious, but they’re sure now. I hope your Koreans are that reliable.”
“Twenty thousand clams. No contingencies,” Ted says. “And they know there’s other parties interested, so they’ll follow up. These people don’t throw money away, Frank. They own a sod farm down around Fort Dix, and they want to move up in the world.” He would like to burble on about his good fortune now that he’s started, but doesn’t out of politeness to me.
“I’m just really disappointed, Ted. That’s all I can say.” Though I’m inventorying my mind for an acceptable fallback, sweat beginning to prickle out of my forehead. I’m to blame for this, for getting diverted from standard practices (though I don’t know that I have any practice I could class as standard).
“Who you voting for this fall?” Ted says. “You guys all pull for business, I guess, don’t you?” I’m wondering if some computer wizard at Bohemia has hacked into our office circuitry. Or possibly Julie Loukinen, who’s new, is double-dipping on our potentials list. I try to remember if I’ve ever seen her with a scruffy Eastern European-looking boyfriend. Though most likely Ted just listed his house as “exclusive” with everybody who came to the door. (And who can be surprised in a free country? It’s laissez-faire: serve your granny to the neighbors for brunch.) “You know neither Dukakis or Bush wants to put out a budget. They don’t want to deliver any unhappy news in case it might offend somebody. I’d much rather they told me they were about to fuck me so I wouldn’t tense up.” Randy new lingo for Ted, the successful house seller. “You want me to take that sign down, by the way?”
“We’ll send somebody out,” I say glumly.
Then suddenly my line to Penns Neck goes loud with fierce papery static so that I can barely hear Ted jibbering on, half gassed, about fin de siècle qualms and something or other, I don’t know what.
“I can’t hear you now, Ted,” I say into the old gunk-smelling receiver, frowning at the stick-figure man signaling me he’s choking, his own hands at his throat, a look of rounded dismay on his balloon face. Then the static stops and I can hear Ted starting in about Bush and Dukakis not being able to tell a good joke if their asses depended on it. I hear him laugh at the whole idea. “So long, Ted,” I say, sure he can’t hear me.
“I read where Bush accepted Christ as his personal savior. Now there’s a joke …,” Ted’s saying extra loud.
I set the receiver gently in its cradle, understanding this bit of life—his and mine—is now over with. I’m almost grateful.
My sworn duty is of course to call the Markhams in a timely manner and break the news, which I try to do, though they’re not in their room at the Raritan Ramada. (No doubt they’re going through the brunch buffet a second time, cocky for making the right decision—too late.) No one comes on the line after twenty-five rings. I call back to leave a message, but a recording puts me on hold, then leaves me out in murky “hold” purgatory, where an FM station is playing “Jungle Flute.” I count to sixty, my hands getting clammy, then decide to call back later since nothing’s at stake anymore.
There are other calls I should make. A hectoring, early-bird “business” call to the McLeods, with an innuendo of unspecified pending actions regarding matters of rent irrespective of personal financial pinches; a call to Julie Loukinen just to let her know “somebody” has let Ted swim through the net. A call to Sally to reaffirm all feelings and say whatever comes into my head, no matter how puzzling. None of these, though, do I feel quite up to. Each seems too complicated on a hot morning, none likely to be rewarding.
But just as I turn to go shake Paul loose from his dreams again, I feel a sudden, flushed, almost breathless urge to call Cathy Flaherty in Gotham. Plenty of times I’ve considered just how welcome (and gratifying) it would be were she just to appear on my doorstep with a bottle of Dom Perignon, demanding an instant barometer reading on me, take my temperature, get the lowdown on how I’ve really been since we last made contact, having naturally enough thought about me no fewer than a million times, with multiple what-ifs embedded everywhere, finally deciding to hunt me down via the Michigan Alumni Association and show up unannounced but “hopefully” not unwelcome. (In my first-draft of the script, we only talk.)
As I was thinking in my room at Sally’s two days ago, few things are as pleasing as being asked to do basically nothing but having all good things come to you as if by right. It’s exactly what poor Joe Markham wanted to happen with his Boise “friend,” except she was too smart for him.
As it happens, I still have Cathy’s number committed to memory from the last time I heard her voice, after Ann announced four years ago that she and Charley were tying the knot and taking the kids, and I was tossed for several loop-the-loops, landing me in the realty business. (Back then I only heard Cathy’s recorded message and couldn’t think of one of my own to leave other than to shout “Help, help, help, help!” and hang up, which I decided against.)
But almost before I know it, I’ve dialed the old number in old 212—a place once guaranteed to work a strange, funkish, double-whammy of low self-regard on me when I worked there as a sportswriter and life was coming unglued the first time. (Now it seems no stranger than Cleveland; such are the freeing, desanctifying fringe benefits of selling real estate.)
More avid cafeteria-eating noises, commingled with mirthless laughter, rise and ebb from next door. I wait for the 212 circuits to lock in on a ring and an answer to occur to someone—honey-haired, honey-skinned Cathy, I’m happily hoping, by now a bona fide M.D., doing her something-or-other, highly competitive specialty whatchamacallit up at Einstein or Cornell, and conceivably willing (it’s also my hope) to take me on for a few moments’ out-of-context, ad hominem-pro bono phone “treatment.” (I’m actually counting on reverse spin here, by which the sound of Cathy’s voice will at once make me feel smart—as can happen—but also feel that I’d better get cracking or face being plowed under by advancing generations with ice water in their veins.)
Ring-ring-ring-a-jing. Ring-ring-ring. Then click. Then a brusque mechanical whir, then another click. It’s not promising. Then, finally, a voice—male, young, smug, as yet undisappointed, an insufferable smart aleck for whom outgoing messages are nothing but chances to gloatingly entertain himself, while demonstrating what an asshole he is to us blameless callers-in. “Hi. This is Cathy and Steve’s answering mechanism. We’re not home now. Really. I promise. We’re not lounging in bed making faces and laughing. Cathy’s probably at the hospital, saving lives or something like that. I’m probably down at Burnham and Culhane, slicing out a bigger piece of the pie for myself. So just be patient and leave us a message, and when time permits one of us will call you back. Probably it’ll be Cathy, since answering machines really kind of bug me. See ya. Bye. Of course wait for the beep.”
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep, click, then the yawning, paralyzing opportunity to leave the most appropriate of messages. “Hi, Cathy?” I say, exhilarated. “It’s Frank.” (Less exhilarat
ed.) “Um. Bascombe. Nothing special, really. I’m, uh, it’s the Fourth of July, or right about then. I’m just up here in Cooperstown, just happened to think about you.” At 8 a.m. “I’m glad to know you’re at the hospital. That’s a good sign. I’m pretty fine. Up here with my son, Paul, who you don’t know.” A long pause while the tape’s running. “Well, that’s about it. By the way, you can tell Steve for me that he can kiss my ass, and I’d be happy to beat the shit out of him any day he can find the time. Bye.” Click. I stand a moment, the receiver in my sweaty hand, assessing what I’ve just done in terms of how it has left me feeling, and also in terms of its character as a small but rash act, possibly foolish and demeaning. And the answer is: better. Much better. Unaccountably. Some idiotic things are well worth doing.
I hike back upstairs to pack, roll Paul out and get the day whacking, since at least for my main purpose (the Markhams aside) it still has some rudiments of promise based on last night’s edgy rapprochement and in any case will end soon enough far from here, with Sally at Rocky and Carlo’s.
Paul meets me at the head of the stairs, hauling along his Paramount bag and wearing his Walkman ear calipers on his neck. He’s groggy and wet-haired, but he’s put on fresh baggy maroon shorts, fresh Day-Glo-orange socks and a big new black tee-shirt that for reasons I know nothing of says Clergy in white on the front (possibly a rock group). When he sees me coming up he offers me his fat-cheeked, impassive expression, as if knowing about me was one thing but seeing me quite another. “I’m surprised to see a fart-smeller like you up here,” he says, then makes a little throaty oink and passes on down the stairs.
In five minutes, though, after making a check for telltale wetness in Paul’s sheets (nothing), I’m back downstairs with my suit bag and my Olympus, ready for breakfast, except the big dining room is still packed with poky breakfasters and Paul is standing at the doorway, staring in with amused disdain. Charlane, in a tight tee-shirt and the same faded jeans from last night, is serving more plates of flapjacks and bacon and bowls of steaming instant scrambled. She looks at me but seems not to recognize me. So that I quickly decide there’s no use waiting (and being ministered to spitefully by Charlane) when we can just as well stash our gear in the car, hike to Main and scare up breakfast for ourselves before the Hall of Fame opens at nine. In other words, let the old Deerslayer sink into history.
Though it hasn’t been that bad a place, lack of an honor bar notwithstanding. Inside its walls, I may have ended the seemingly unendable with Ann, dodged a ricochet with Charlane and, possibly, set things on the rails with Sally Caldwell. Plus, Paul and I have skirmished nearer each other’s trust, and I have been able at least to speak a few of the way-pointing words I’d prepared for that purpose. All noteworthy accomplishments. With only slightly better luck, the Deerslayer could’ve become a hallowed and even sacred place where, say, early next century, Paul could come back alone or with a wife or girlfriend or his own troublesome brood, and tell them this was a place he “used to come with his late dad,” where life-altering wisdom that made all the difference in later life was passed along—though he might not be able to say with complete certainty what the wisdom was.
Several munching breakfasters (I see no one I recognize) have raised wintry eyes up from their plates to where Paul and I are standing at the dining room door, briefly transfixed by deep currents of good coffee, smoked sausage, hash browns, sticky buns, pancake syrup, scrapple and powdered eggs. Their guarded eyes say, “Hey, we won’t be hurried.” “We’ve paid for this.” “We’re entitled to our own pace.” “It’s our vacation.” “Waitchyerturn.” “Isn’t that the joker who was shouting on the phone?” “What about this ‘Clergy’ shirt?” “Something’s fishy here.”
Paul, though, his Paramount bag slung to his pudgy shoulder, suddenly sets both his hands palms out against the invisible wall and begins sliding them place to place, here and there, up, down, side to side, a look of empty-mouthed horror contorting his sweet boy’s face, and whispering “Help me, help me. I don’t want to die.”
“So I don’t think there’s room at the inn for us, son,” I say.
“Please don’t let me die,” Paul continues softly, so only I can hear. “Just don’t drop the tablet in the acid. Please, warden.” He is a sweet, tricky boy and after my heart—my ally just when (or almost when) I feel most in need.
He turns his dying-man’s face of hollow-yap horror up to me, his hands now to his cheeks in silent, stricken astonishment. No one in the room has the will to look at him now, their noses back in their vittles like jailbirds. He makes two plainly audible eeecks that seem to come out of the bottom of a shallow well. “Alias Sibelius,” he says.
“What’s that mean?” I hike my suit bag up, ready to roll.
“It’s a good punch line. I can’t think of the joke, though. Mom puts arsenic in my food since she got a boyfriend. So my IQ’s dropping.”
“I’ll try to talk to her,” I say, and then we are off, no one noticing as we step together out into the morning’s hot brilliance, bound for the Hall of Fame.
Church bells now clang and clatter all over town, rounding ’em up for morning worship. Well-dressed, pale-faced family groups of three, four and even six march two abreast down every village sidewalk, veering this way toward the Second Methodist, that way toward the Congregationalists, across to Christ Church Episcopal and the First Prez. Others, less well turned out—men in clean but unpressed work khakis and polo shirts, women in red wraparounds, no stockings and a scarf—exit cars to dash into Our Lady of the Lake for a brief and breathless brush with grace before heading off to a waitress job, a tee time or an assignation in some other village.
Paul and I, on the other hand, fit in well with the pilgrim feel of things temporal—nonworshipful, nonpious, camera-toting dads and sons, dads and daughters, in summery togs, winding our certain but vaguely embarrassed way toward the Hall of Fame (as if there were something shameful about going). Cars are moving by us, the Gay Nineties trolleys toting “senior groups” to the town’s other attractions—the Fenimore House and the Farmers’ Museum, where there are displays and demos of things as they used to be when the world was better. Plus, all the shops are open, ice cream’s for sale, music’s in the air, the lake’s full of water, nothing a visitor could want wouldn’t be taken into at least partial account by somebody.
We have parked our gear in the car behind the inn and hiked by dead reckoning down to the marina and into a booth in a little aqua-blue eatery with oversize windows called The Water’s Edge, built right out over the water like Charley’s studio, only on creosote pilings. Inside, though, it’s so rigidly cold that the cheese fries and Denver omelet aromas seem as dank as the inside of an old ice chest, making me feel, in spite of scenic lake views, that we would’ve been smarter to wait for a place where we’d already paid.
Paul, on our walk over through the short, lakeside back streets lined with homey blue-collar abodes, has raised himself to the best good humor of the trip, and once we’re in our red booth has commenced a wide-ranging discourse of what it’d be like to live in Cooperstown.
Working over his Deluxe Belgian, piled with canned whipped cream and gelid strawberries, he declares that if we were to move here he would definitely invest in a “big paper route” (in Deep River, he says, this is an industry bossed over by “Italian greasers” who kick ass on whitebread kids who try to horn in). He likewise says, all sarcasm gone, gray eyes sparkling while he eats, that he’d feel obligated to visit the Hall of Fame once a week until he had it memorized—“Why else live here?”—and that he would eat here at The Water’s Edge “religiously every Sunday morning,” just like now, would find out all about the Cardiff Giant (another local attraction) and the Farmers’ Museum, possibly even work there as a guide, and would probably go out for baseball and football. He also surprisingly informs me, while I’m plowing through my own fast-congealing “Home Run Plate” and occasionally gazing out at a flock of mallards mooching
popcorn from boat dock tourists, that he’s decided to read all of Emerson when he gets home, since he’ll probably be on probation and have more time for reading. He muddles his liquefying whipped cream around over his waffle cleats, getting it conscientiously into all sectors while explaining to me, head down, his Walkman still on his neck, that as a “borderline dyslexic” (this is news to me) he notices more than most people in his age bracket, since he doesn’t “process” things as fast and ends up having more opportunity to consider (or get completely derailed by) “certain subjects,” which is why he reads the labor-intensive New Yorker—“klepto’d out of Chuck’s crapper”—and why in fact he’s come to believe I need to ditch the realty business—“not interesting enough”—and move away from New Jersey—ditto—possibly to “a place sort of like this one,” and maybe get into a business like furniture stripping or bartending, something hands-on and low-stress, and “maybe get back to writing stories.” (He has always respected the fact that I was briefly a writer and keeps a signed copy of Blue Autumn in his room.)
My heart, needless to say, leaps to him. Beneath the turmoiled surfaces he means everyone everywhere all the best, security guards included. Cooperstown, even before he’s stepped through the doors of its magical Hall of Fame, has won a magical victory over him by inducing a stress-free idyll of small-pond-big-fish ordinariness he would dearly love to be his. (Seemingly all his bad-fitting rings have spun down into happy congruence.) Though I can’t help wondering if this brief flight of empire-sketching might not be the happiest moment of his life, and in a twinkling he may look back on it with no clarity, no grasp of the details. It may in fact turn out to cause him even greater anxiety and wider warping since he’ll never summon up such an idyll again in just this way and yet will never completely forget it or stop wondering about where it’s gone. This is the cautionary view I took when he was small and talked to people who weren’t there, a view I might’ve thought would protect him. I should’ve known, however, as I know now and as it ever is with kids and even those who’re older: nothing stays as it is for long and, once again, there’s no such thing as a false sense of well-being.