The Lay of the Land (52 page)

“I do,” I cheerfully lie. I’m picturing my daughter with polyethnic Thom, who I hope never to see again.

Termite’s sweet smile turns instantly professional-impersonal. “Yeah. Well. Das good. Yep,” she says crisply. “Happy hour almost over wid. You need anything?”

“I’m already happy,” I say, wanting to sound affirming about all her life’s prospects but one.

“Dere you go,” she says, and turns straight away again and saunters down the duckboards, proclaiming, “Now ya’ll fatsos try to control ya’ll selves.”

“Fuck you and that goat you rode in on, you skinny little bitch,” one of the women shouts in merry mirth, and they all convulse full-throated.

I
browse back through the curled pages of the
Buyer’s Guide,
wanting to give mechanic Chris another ten minutes. These publications can actually be the most helpful and news-packed that any citizen could hope for when entering a community or region where he knows no one and might grow dispirited and feel tempted just to head home to Waukegan. In the interest of plain and simple commerce, but for the price of nothing, the
Guide
provides a well-researched list of “essential services,” crisis numbers, “Best Bet” Italian, Filipino and Thai cuisines, walk-in wellness clinics, an e-mail address for a mortgage-consultant clearing house, emergency dental care and pet health hot-line numbers, oxygen tank delivery, bump shops and bail bondsmen. And, of course, bi-weekly training classes in the real estate profession. There’s even a list of local numbers for Monmouth and Ocean County Sponsors Anonymous. Plus, many small-business opportunities are advertised, situations where you can walk in and take over like I did. I always find one or two new summer rental properties every year by leafing through these pages on slow Saturday afternoons in January—often chalets I could buy myself if they’re in presentable shape, or manage for a good fee if they’re not. I also read through these crowded pages just to acquire (by osmosis) some sense of how we’re all basically doing, what we need to be wary of, look forward to or look back on with pride or relief. These spiritual sign-pointers are revealed to me in old fire stations, rectories or Chrysler agencies that are for sale, or once-thriving businesses in turnaround, or the number of old homes versus new ones on the sale block, or the addresses and plat maps of new constructions, the ethnicity (gauged by the names) of who’s selling what, who’s doing the cooking or who’s going out of business. And finally, of course, what costs what, versus what used to cost what. There’s in fact a listing in the middle Green Pages of every property sold in Monmouth and Ocean counties and how much was paid and by whom—sure signs of the time. Little of this will be anything I make a note about or mention to Mike in our Monday strategy breakfasts at the Earl of Sandwich. It’s just the soft susurrus, the hick and tick of the engine that warms us when it’s cold, soothes us when it’s beastly, and that we all hear and feel on our arms, necks and faces like atmosphere, whether we know it or whether we never do.

On page sixty-four, however, amidst all that’s familiar, a new
Guide
feature attracts my eye, part of a double-truck layout for the Mengelt Agency in Vanhiseville. Mengelt offerings are generally small, characterless scrub lots in old interior suburbs on their way to extinction, exactly like the ones Mike and I rode past on our trip to Haddam. The Mengelt motto, in hopeful serifs, is, “We find your home. You find the happiness.” There’s the usual row of tiny page-bottom snapshots showing the mostly unsmiling, mostly female Mengelt agents—a new batch of Carols, Jennifers and a Blanche—contributing to the impression that the institution of marriage may be losing some traction in Vanhiseville.

But in a larger framed box, under the title “Profiles in Real Estate Courage,” is a sharp color photo of “Associate of the Month” Fred Frantal, smiling and cherub-cheeked, a sausage of a fellow with a round weak chin, crinkly hair, a fuzzy mustache and two happy, saucerish eyes. Fred’s wearing a red-and-green lumberjack shirt that hints of a decent-size personal sculpture below the frame. And under his picture there’s printed a lengthy story apparently pertaining to Fred, which the Mengelt associates want the world to know about. I’d probably be smart to plaster Mike’s squinting, beaming mug onto our ad, with a boiled-down account of his improbable but inspirational life’s journey from Tibet to the Jersey Shore. It would attract the curious, which is often where commerce begins.

“‘Frog’ Frantal,” the Mengelt story goes, “is not just our
Associate of the Month
but our
Associate of the Millennium.
A two-year Vanhiseville resident and graduate associate from Middlesex Community College, Fred got gold-plated lucky when he married Carla Boykin back in ’82 and moved to Holmeson to be an EMS technician for the H’son Rescue Unit, where he saved many lives and made a big impression on many others. Fred and Carla raised two great kids, Chick and Bev, and have always trained Rottweilers. The Frantals moved to Vanhiseville in 1998, when Fred retired from the FD, having earned his real estate license at night. He joined the Mengelt family last year and made an instant impact here, too, on our residential sales, due to his EMS contacts and generally positive outlook (he loves cold calls). Fred’s a Navy vet, a brown belt in tae kwon do, an avid surfcaster and snowmobiler, a Regular Baptist Church member and these days is in demand as a motivational speaker on youth and grieving issues. Sadly, last winter tragedy struck the Frantals, when their son Chick, 20, was killed by a drunken snowmobiler in eastern PA. We all mourned Fred and Carla’s loss. But with support of friends, loved ones and the Mengelt crew, Fred’s back and ready to list your house and sell you another one. Frog has topped our leaders board eight of the last ten months, and deserves the distinction of
Associate of the Millennium.
He believes that whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and that you meet triumph and disaster and make friends with both. If either of these describes your current real estate situation, give Fred a call at (732) 555-2202, or e-mail him at [email protected]. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us!”

Voices in the bar. Laughter. The tinkle-clinkle of glasses. Shuffle of booted feet, squeezing bar-stool leather, heavy coats rustling, exhale of heavy breaths. Outside, there’s the hiss of wind, the spatter splat of rain on the metal roof. A sigh of a door closing. These sounds of mutuality and arrival recede down a hallway, yet grow more distinct, as though I viewed the livening bar on a screen, with the sound track elsewhere.

Down the bar, little silver-haired Termite frowns toward me, narrows her eyes suspiciously, then turns back to the bar full of women, all laughing at something. Someone says, pretty loud, “So it turns out, see, that China’s
really fucking BIG.
” “Whoa,” someone else says.

I am, I now perceive, immobilized on my stool, though in no danger of toppling off. I don’t feel drunk, though I could be. My head isn’t swimming. My extremities aren’t dulled or immobilized. I’d recognize all the money denominations in my pocket if I had to, could pay my tab and walk right out into the stormy parking lot and take command of my vehicle (which must be fixed by now). Yet I’m heavy-armed and moored to the bar rail, my heels stuck to the brass footrest. My empty highball glass seems small and distant—once again, as when I was a feverish kid and the contents of my room got pleasantly distant, and the sound of my mother’s footsteps in another room were all I experienced of ambient sound.

I’ve said it before. I do not credit the epiphanic, the seeing-through that reveals all, triggered by a mastering detail. These are lies of the liberal arts to distract us from the more precious here and now. Life’s moments truly come at us heedless, not at the bidding of a gilded fragrance. The Permanent Period is specifically commissioned to combat these indulgences into the pseudo-significant. We’re all separate agents, each underlain by an infinite remoteness; and to the extent we’re not and require to be
significant,
we’re not so interesting.

And yet. In this strange, changed state I for this moment find myself, and for reasons both trivial and circumstantial (the bar, the booze, the day, even Fred Frantal), my son Ralph Bascombe, age twenty-nine (or for accuracy’s sake, age nine), comes seeking audience in my brain.

And I am then truly immobilized. And with what? Fear? Love? Regret? Shame? Lethargy? Bewilderment? Heartsickness? Whimsy? Wonder? You never know for sure, no matter what the great novels tell you.

It may go without saying, but when you have a child die—as I did nineteen years ago—you carry him with you forever and ever after. Of course you should. And not that I “talk” to him (though some might) or obsess endlessly (as his brother, Paul, did for years until it made him loony), or that I expect Ralph to turn up at my door, like Wally, with a wondrous story of return or of long, shadowy passageways with luminous light awaiting, from which he bolted at the last second (I’ve fantasized that could happen, though it was just a way to stay interested as years went by). For me, left back, there’s been no dead-zone sensation of life suspended, hollowed, wind-raddled, no sense of not leading my
real
life but only some consolation-prize life nobody would want—I’m sure that can happen, too.

Though what
has
developed is that my life’s become alloyed with loss. Ralph, and then Ralph being dead, long ago became embedded in all my doings and behaviors. And not like a disease you carry that never gets better, but more the way being left-handed is ever your companion, or that you don’t like parsnips and never eat them, or that once there was a girl you loved for the very first time and you can’t help thinking of her—nonspecifically—every single day. And while this may seem profane or untrue to say, the life it’s made has been and goes on being a much more than merely livable life. It’s made a good life, this loss, one I don’t at all regret. (The Frantals couldn’t be expected to believe this, but maybe can in time.)

Of course, Ralph’s death was why Ann and I couldn’t stay married another day seventeen years back. We were always thinking the same things, occupying and dividing up the same tiny piece of salted turf, couldn’t surprise and please each other the way marrieds need to. Death became all we had in common, a common jail. And who wanted that till our own deaths did us part? There would be a forever, we knew, and we had to live on into it, divided and joined by death. And not that it was harder on us than it was on Ralph, who died, after all, and not willingly. But it was hard enough.

Out of the rosy bar-light distance, as though emerging from a long passageway, so long she’ll never reach me in my state—I’m drunk, okay—is Termite, thumbs provocatively in her black denim pockets, inquisitive grin on her mousy mouth, eyes shining, fixed on me. We are like lovers who’ve become friends late in life: She knows my hilarious eccentricities and failures and only takes me half seriously. I love her to bits but no longer feel the old giddy-up. We could spend hours now just talking.

“You know all what I was yakkin’ about back den? I’m probably gon’ forget about it tomorrow. It ain’t permanent—goin’ crazy. You know whut ahm sayin’?” She sweeps away my empty highball glass, drops it
plunk
into the sudsy sink. “Do you say
drought
or
drouth
?” She stares across at me, though her face has turned suspicious in a hurry, as though I’d offered her a counterfeit tenner. She takes a step back, cocks her flat-topped head, her mouth curls cruelly the way I knew it could. “Whut’s wrong witch you?”

Unexpectedly, my eyes flood with tears, my hot cheeks taking the runoff. I’ve known about them for the better part of a minute but have been stuck here, unable to blink or wipe my nose with my sleeve or to think about a trip to the gents or about seeking a breath of rescue in the out-of-doors. I don’t know what to say about
drought
or
drouth. Dry
comes into my mind, as does
I’m in a terrible state.
Though like a lot of terrible states, it doesn’t feel so bad.

“I-I—” My old stammer, not heard from in years but always lurking were I to laugh inconsiderately at another stammerer—which I never do—now revisits my glottus. “I-I-I don’t know.” I want to smile but don’t quite make it.

Termite’s hard little ferret’s eyes fix on me. She performs one of her flash glances back down the bar, as if my predicament needs to be kept under wraps. “Wadn’t nuthin
I
said,” she announces, but not loud.

“N-n-n-o.” My hands clutch the
Buyer’s Guide
and give it another fierce re-spindling.
N
is a hard one for stutterers. My chest empties as if somebody has just stamped on it. Then it heaves a big sigh-sounding noise, which I manage not to let out as a groan, though stifling it hurts like hell. I have to get out of here now. I could die here.

“You piss drunk is all,” Termite snarls. This is not old-lovers-become-friends. This is, “I’ve seen the likes of you all my life, been married to it, fucked it, wallowed in it, but I’m well out of it as you see me now.” That’s what this is.

“Ahhh, yeah.” This time an actual groan issues forth. Then more tears. Then a shudder. What’s going on? What’s going on? What’s going on?

“Jew drive here?”

“Yeah.” I reach my nose with my jacket sleeve and saw back and forth.

“You drive off and git in a wreck and kill some kid, you ain’t sayin’ you been in here. You got dat? I’m spose to take dem keys”—She regards me with revulsion, right hand on her silver bowie knife hilt. How can things change so fast? I haven’t done anything—“but I don’t wanna touch you.” She snorts back a stiff breath, as if I smell bad.

I am climbing off my bar stool, feeling light-headed but terribly heavy, like a sandbag puppet.

“Y’hearin’ what ahm sayin’?” Her eyes narrow to a threat. Termite might be her real name.

“Okay. Sure.” From my pocket I produce a piece of U.S. paper currency along with my Realty-Wise card. It could be a million-dollar bill. These I place on the bar. “Thanks,” I say, my mouth chromy. My hands are cold, my feet thick.