by Richard Ford
“Four-six Clio, check,” Joe said militarily.
“When can we move in?” Phyllis said from the background.
“Tomorrow morning if you want to. It’s ready to go. It just needs airing out.”
“It’s ready to go,” Joe said brusquely.
“Oh, thank God,” I heard Phyllis say.
“I guess you heard that,” Joe said, brimming with relief and craven satisfaction.
“I’ll see you there, Joe.” And in that way the deal was sealed.
The car alarm goes just as suddenly silent, and quiet morning reconvenes. (These almost never herald an actual robbery.) Down the block some kids are hovering around what looks like a red coffee can they’ve set in the middle of the street. No doubt they’re following through on plans for an early-morning detonation to alert the neighbors that it’s a holiday. Fireworks, of course, are unthinkably illegal in Haddam, and once the explosion blows, it’s automatic that a cruiser will idle through the neighborhood, an HPD officer inquiring if we’ve heard or seen people shooting or carrying guns. I’ve noticed Myrlene Beavers twice behind her screen, her walker glinting out of the murk. She seems not to notice me today but to concentrate her vigilance on the boys, one of whom—his little face shiny and black—is sporting a bright Uncle Sam costume and will no doubt be marching in the parade later on (assuming he’s not in jail). There is yet no sign of the Markhams, or for that matter the McLeods, whom I also have business with.
Since arriving at eight, I’ve mowed the small front yard with the (supplied) hand mower, watered the parched grass and sprayed the metal siding using my hose from home. I’ve cut back the dead hydrangea branches and the spirea and the roses, hauled the refuse to the back alley and opened windows and doors front and back to get air flowing inside the house. I’ve swept the porch, the front walk, run the tap in all the sinks, flushed the commode, used my broom to jab any cobwebs out from the ceiling corners and finished up by taking down the FOR RENT sign and stowing it in my trunk just to minimize the Markhams’ feelings of displacement.
As always, I’ve noticed an awkward, flat-footed sensation involved with showing my own rental house (though I’ve done it several times since the Harrises left). The rooms seem somehow too large (or small), too drab and unhopeful, already used up and going nowhere, as though the only thing to truly revive the place would be for me to move in myself and turn it homey with my own possessions and positive attitudes. It’s possible, of course, that this reaction is only compensatory for some wrong take a potential renter might fall victim to, since my underlying feeling is that I like the house exactly the way I liked it the day I bought it almost two years ago, and the McLeods’ house the same. (I’ve seen a curtain twitch there now, but no face shows behind it—someone observing me, someone who doesn’t enjoy paying his or her rent.) I admire its clean, tidy, unassuming adequacy, its sturdy rightness, finished off by the soffit vents, the new wrought-iron banister on the stoop, even the flashing to prevent ice dams and water “creep” during January thaws. It would be my dream house if I were a renter: tight, shipshape, cozy. A no-brainer.
In the Trenton Times I find holiday news, most of it not good. A man in Providence has sneaked a peek down a fireworks cannon at the most imperfect of moments and lost his life. Two people in far distant parts of the country have been shot with crossbows (both times at picnics). There’s a “rash” of arsons, though fewer boating mishaps than might seem likely. I’ve even found a squib for the murder I stumbled upon three nights back: the vacationers were from Utah; they were bound for the Cape; the husband was stabbed; the alleged assailants were fifteen—the age of my son—and from Bridgeport. No names are given, so that all seems insulated from me now, only the relatives left to bear the brunt.
On the briefer, lighter side, the Beach Boys are at Bally’s grandstand for one show only, flag-pole sales have once again skyrocketed, harness racing is celebrating its birthday (150) and a kidney transplant team (five men and a black Lab) is at this hour swimming the Channel—their foreseeable impediments: oil slicks, jellyfish and the twenty-one miles themselves (though not their kidneys).
Though the most interesting news is of two natures. One pertains to the demonstration at the Baseball Hall of Fame yesterday, the one that diverted Paul and me off our course and onward to what fate held in store. The demonstrators who blocked the Hall’s doors for an important hour were, it turns out, rising in support of a lovable Yankee shortstop from the Forties, who deserved (they felt) a place, a plaque and a bust inside but who in the view of the sportswriter pundits was never good enough and had come by his obscurity honestly. (I side with the protesters on the principle of Who cares anyway?)
Yet of even more exotic interest is the “Haddam story,” the discovery by our streets crew of a whole human skeleton unearthed, so the Times says, Friday morning at nine (on Cleveland Street, the 100 block) by a backhoe operator trenching our new sewer line under the provisos of our “well-being” bond. Details are sketchy due to the backhoe operator’s poor command of English, but there’s speculation by the town historian that the remains could be “very old, indeed, by Haddam standards,” though another rumor has it that the bones are a “female Negro servant” who disappeared a hundred years ago when the Presidents Streets were a dairy farm. Still another theorizes an Italian construction worker was “buried alive” in the Twenties when the town was replatted. Local residents have already half-seriously named the bones “Homo haddamus pithecarius,” and an archaeological team from Fairleigh Dickinson is planning to have a look. Meanwhile, the remains are in the morgue. More later, we think, and hope.
When I arrived last night at eleven, having beaten it home in four hours to an odd day-within-night indigo luminance down the quiet streets of town (many house lights were still lit), a message was waiting from Ann, declaring that Paul had come through his surgery “okay” and there was reason for hope, though he would probably develop glaucoma by fifty and need glasses much sooner. He was “resting comfortably” in any event, and I could call her anytime at a 203 number, a Scottish Inn in Hamden (the closer-in New Haven places already filled again with holiday voyagers).
“It was funny, almost,” Ann said drowsily, I supposed from bed. “When he came out of it he just jabbered on and on about the Baseball Hall of Fame. All about the exhibits he’d seen and the … I guess they’re statues. Right? He thought he’d had a splendid time. I asked him how you’d liked it, and he said you hadn’t been able to go. He said you’d had a date with somebody. So … some things are funny.”
A languor in Ann’s voice made me think of the last year of our marriage, eight years ago nearly, when we made love half waking in the middle of the night (and only then), half aware, half believing the other might be someone else, performing love’s acts in a half-ritual, half-blind, purely corporal way that never went on long and didn’t qualify as much or dignify passion, so vaguely willed and distant from true intimacy was it, so inhibited by longing and dread. (This was not so long after Ralph’s death.)
But where had passion gone? I wondered it all the time. And why, when we needed it so? The morning after such a night’s squandering, I’d wake and feel I’d done good for humanity but not much for anyone I knew. Ann would act as if she’d had a dream she only remotely remembered as pleasant. And then it was over for a long time, until our needs would once more rise (sometimes weeks and weeks later) and, aided by sleep, our ancient fears suppressed, we would meet again. Desire, turned to habit, allowed to go sadly astray by fools. (We could do better now, or so I decided last night, since we understand each other better, having nothing to offer or take away and therefore nothing worth holding back or protecting. It is a kind of progress.)
“Has he done any sort of barking?” I asked.
“No,” Ann said, “not that I’ve heard him. Maybe he’ll quit that now.”
“How’s Clarissa?” Emptying my pockets, I’d found the tiny red bow she’d presented me out of her hai
r, companion to the one Paul had eaten. No doubt, I thought, it’s she who’ll decide what goes on my tombstone. And she will be exacting.
“Oh, she’s fine. She stayed down to see Cats and the Italian fireworks over the river. She’s interested in taking care of her brother, in addition to being slightly glad it happened.”
“That’s a dim view.” (Although it was probably not a far-fetched one.)
“I feel just a little dim.” She sighed, and I could tell, as used to be true, she was in no rush to get off now, could’ve talked to me for hours, asked and answered many questions (such as why I never wrote about her), laughed, gotten angry, come back from anger, sighed, gotten nowhere, gone to sleep on the phone with me at the other end, and in that way soothed the rub of events. It would’ve been a perfect time to ask her why she hadn’t worn her wedding ring in Oneonta, whether she had a boyfriend, if she and Charley were on the fritz. Plus other queries: Did she really believe I never told the truth and that Charley’s dull truths were better? Did she think I was a coward? Didn’t she know why I never wrote about her? More, even. Only I found that these questions had no weight now, and that we were, by some dark and final magic, no longer in the other’s audience. It was odd. “Did you get anything interesting accomplished in two days? I hope so.”
“We didn’t get around to any current events,” I said to amuse her. “I heard most of his views. We talked over some other important things. It might be better. He might be better. I don’t know. His accident cut everything short.” With my tongue I touched the sore, bitten inside of my mouth. I did not mean to talk specifics with her.
“You two are so much alike, it makes me sad,” she said sadly. “I can actually see it in his eyes, and they’re my eyes. I think I understand you both too well.” She breathed in, then out. “What are you doing for the holiday?”
“A date.” I said this too forcefully.
“A date. That’s a good idea.” She paused. “I’ve become very impersonal now. I felt it when I saw you this afternoon. You seemed very personal, even when I didn’t recognize you. I actually envied you. Part of me cares about things, but part doesn’t really seem to.”
“It’s just a phase,” I said. “It’s just today.”
“Do you really think I’m a person of little faith? You accused me of that when you got mad at me. I wanted you to know that it worried me.”
“No,” I said. “You’re not. I was just disappointed in myself. I don’t think you are.” (Though it’s possible she is.)
“I don’t want to be,” Ann said in a mournful voice. “I certainly wouldn’t like it if life was just made up of the specific grievances we could answer all strung together and that was it. I decided that’s what you meant about me—that I was a problem solver. That I just liked specific answers to specific questions.”
“Liked them instead of what?” I said. Though I guessed I knew.
“Oh. I don’t know, Frank. Instead of being interested in important things that’re hard to recognize? Like when we were kids. Just life. I’m very tired of some problems.”
“It’s human nature not to get to the bottom of things.”
“And that doesn’t ever get uninteresting to you, does it?” I thought she might be smiling, but not necessarily happily.
“Sometimes,” I said. “More recently it has.”
“A big forest of fallen trees,” she said in a dreamy way. “That doesn’t seem so bad today.”
“Don’t you think I could bring him down here in September?” I knew this was not the best time to ask. I had asked seven hours before. But when was the best time? I didn’t want to wait.
“Oh,” she said, staring I was sure out a frosted air-conditioned window at the small lights of Hamden and the Wilbur Cross, a-strearn with cars bound for less adventuresome distances, the holiday almost over before the day even arrived. I would miss it with my son. “We’ll have to talk to him. I’ll talk to Charley. We’ll have to see what his ombudsman says. In principle it might be all right. Isn’t that okay to say now?”
“In principle it’s fine. I just think I could be some use to him now. You know? More than his ombudsman.”
“Ummm,” she said. And I couldn’t think of anything else to say, staring at the mulberry leafage, my reflection cast back: a man alone at a desk by a telephone, a table lamp, the rest dark. The complex odors of backyard cooking over with hours before still floated out of the evening. “He’ll want to know when you’re coming to visit him.” She said this without inflection.
“I’ll drive up Friday. Tell him I’ll visit him wherever he’s in custody.” Then I almost said, “He bought you and Clarissa some presents.” But true to my word, I forbore.
And then she was silent, taking time to assess. “Doing anything wholeheartedly is rare. That’s probably why you said that. I was shitty the other night, I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay,” I said brightly. “It’s harder, that’s for sure.”
“You know, when I saw you today I felt very good about you. That was the first time in a long time. It seemed very strange. Did you notice it?”
I couldn’t answer that, so I just said, “That’s not bad, though, is it?” my voice still bright. “That’s an advance.”
“You always seem like you want something from me,” she said. “But I think maybe you just want to make me feel better when you’re around. Is that right?”
“I do want you to feel better,” I said. “That’s right.” It is part of the Existence Period—and I think now not a good part—to seem to want something but then not to.
Ann paused again. “Do you remember I said it’s not easy being an ex-spouse?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, it’s not easy not being one, either.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not,” and then I said nothing.
“So. Call up tomorrow,” she said cheerfully—disappointed, I knew, by some more complicated, possibly sad, even interesting truth she had heard herself speak and been surprised by but that I hadn’t risen to. “Call the hospital. He’ll need to talk to his Dad. Maybe he’ll tell you about the Hall of Fame.”
“Okay,” I said softly.
“Bye-bye.”
“Bye-bye,” I said, and we hung up.
Blam!
I watch the red coffee can spin high as the rooftops, become a small, whirly shadow on the sky, then lazily sink back toward the hot pavement.
All the kids hightail it down the street, their feet slapping, including Uncle Sam, holding for some reason the top of his head, where he has no tall hat.
“You gon git yo eye put out!” someone shouts.
“Wooo, wooo, wooo, got damn!” is what they say in answer. Across Clio Street a young black woman in astonishing yellow short shorts and a yellow buxom halter top leans out over her porch rail, watching the boys as they scatter. The can hits the pavement in front of her house, torn and jagged, bounces and goes still. “Ah-mo beat ya’ll butts!” she shouts out as Uncle Sam rounds the corner onto Erato on one hopping, skidding foot, still holding his bare head, and then is gone. “Ah-mo call the cops ’n’ they gon beat ya’ll butts too!” she says. The boys are laughing in the distance. There is, I see, a FOR SALE sign in front of her house, conspicuous in the little privet-hedged and grassy postage-stamp yard. It is new, not ours.
With her hands on the banister, the woman turns her gaze my way, where I’m seated on my porch steps with my paper, gazing back in a neighborly way. She is barefooted and no doubt has just been waked up. “’Cause ah-mo be glaaad to git outa this place, y’unnerstan?” she says to the street, to me, to whoever might have a door open or a window ajar and be listening. “’Cause it’s noisy up here, ya’ll. Ah’m tellin ya’ll. Ya’ll be noiseee!”
I smile at her. She looks at me in my red jacket, then throws her head back and laughs as if I was the silliest person she ever saw. She puts her hand up like a church witness, lowers her head, then wanders ba
ck inside.
Crows fly over—two, six, twelve—in ragged, dipping lines, squawking as though to say, “Today is not a holiday for crows. Crows work.” I hear the Haddam H.S. band, as I did Friday morning, early again on its practice grounds, rich, full-brass crescendos streets away, a last fine-tuning before the parade. “Com-onna-my-house-my-house-a-com-on” seems to be their rouser. The crows squawk, then dive crazily through the morning’s hot air. The neighborhood seems unburdened, peopled, serene.
And then I see the Markhams’ beater Nova appear at the top of the street, a half hour late. It slows as though its occupants were consulting a map, then begins again bumpily down my way, approaches the house with my car in front, veers, someone waves from inside, and then, at last, they have come to rest.
Oh, we got into such a bind, Frank,” Phyllis says, not quite able to portray for me what she and Joe have been forced through. Her blue eyes seem bluer than ever, as if she has changed to vivider contacts. “We felt like we were strapped to a runaway train. She just wouldn’t quit showing us houses.” She, of course, refers to the horror-show realty associate from East Brunswick. Phyllis looks at me in dejected wonderment for the way some people will act.
We’re on the stoop of 46 Clio, paused as though to defeat a final reluctance before commencing our ritual walk-thru. I’ve already pointed out some improvements—a foundation vent, new flashing—noted the convenience of in-town shopping, hospital, train and schools. (No mention has been made by them of other races in close proximity.)
“I guess she was going to make us buy a house if it killed her,” Phyllis says, bringing the Other Realtor story to a close. “Joe sure wanted to murder her. I just wanted to call you.”