The Lay of the Land (55 page)

Hard to think, though, that the Frantals alone could’ve sprung me this far loose with their sad acceptance
qua
sales pitch. Chances are, with the year I’ve had, I was headed there anyway, preparing to meet my Maker. When I asked what it was I had to do before I was sixty, maybe it’s just to accept my whole life and my whole self in it—to have that chance before it’s too late: to try again to achieve what athletes achieve when their minds are clear, their parts in concert, when they’re “feeling it,” when the ball’s as big as the moon and they hit it a mile because that’s all they can do. When nothing else is left. The Next Level.

A cooling tear exits my eye crease where I’m turned on the pillow to face the inky sea. The single-lighted ship is nearly past the window’s frame. Possibly they do more than one cremains box per night if no mourners are along. This could be what the funeral business means when it says “We’re trustworthy.” No tricks. No shameless practices. No doubling up. No tossing Grandma Beulah in the dumpster behind Eckerd’s. We do what we say we’ll do whether you’re along or not. A rarity.

Somewhere below the ocean’s hiss I hear Bimbo’s doggy voice, musical within the Feensters’ walls, yap-yap-yap, yap-yap-yap. Then a muffled man’s voice—Nick—not decipherable, then silence. I detect the murmur of the Sumitomo banker’s limo as it motors down Poincinet Road past my house for his early morning pickup, hear two car doors close, then the murmured passage back. No Thanksgiving for the Nikkei.

My last tear, after this many, and many more not shed, is a tear of relief. Acceptable life frees you to embrace the next thing. Though who’s to say it all wouldn’t have worked fine anyway—those familiar old rejections and denials performing their venerable tasks. Years ago, I knew that mourning could be long. But
this
long? Easy to argue some things might be better left alone, since permanence, real permanence, not the soft blandishments of the period I invented, can be scary as shit, since it rids you of your old, safe context. With whom, for instance, am I supposed to “share” that I’ve accepted Ralph’s death? What’s it supposed to
mean
? How will it register and signify? Will it be hard to survive? Can I still sell a house? Will I want to? And how would it have been different if I’d accepted everything right from the first, like the CEO of GE or General Schwarzkopf would’ve? Would I be living in Tokyo now? Would I have died of acceptance? Or be in Haddam still? God only knows. Maybe all would’ve been about the same; maybe acceptance is over-rated—though the shrinks all tell you different, which just means they don’t know. After all, we each carry around with us plenty of “things” that’re unsatisfactory, “things” we’re wanting to undo or ignore so other “things” can be happier, so the heart can open wider. Ask Marguerite Purcell. As I said, acceptance is goddamned scary. I feel its very fearsomeness here in my bed, in my empty house with the storm past and Thanksgiving waiting with the dawn in the east. Be careful what you accept, is my warning—to me. I will if I can.

Out in the dark, I hear a motorcycle, nazzing, gunning, high-pitched, somewhere out on Ocean Avenue, though it fades. Then I think I hear another car, a smaller foreign one with narrow-gauge tires and a cheap muffler, slowing at my driveway. For a moment, I think it’s Clarissa, home now, with Thom in the Healey, or alone in a rented Daewoo—safe. I’ll hear the front door softly open and softly click closed. But that’s not it. It’s only the
Asbury Press.
I hear music from the carrier’s AM as his window lowers and the folded paper whaps the gravel. Then the window closes and the song fades—“Gotta take that sentimental journey, sen-ti-men-tal jour-ur-ney home.” I hear it down the street and down into my sleep. And then I hear nothing more.

Part 3

13

Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp! Brrrp-brrrrp!

My Swiss telephone, stylish, metal, minuscule (a present from Clarissa on my return to the land of the living), sings its distressing Swiss wake-up song: “Bad news, bad news for you (and it ain’t in Switzerland, either).”

I clutch for the receiver, so flat and sleek I can’t find it. My room’s full of morning light and cottony, humid, warmer air. What hour is it? I knock over my pile of books, detonating a loud and heavy clatter.

“Bascombe,” I say, breathless, into the tiny voice slit. This is never how I answer the phone. But my heart’s pounding with expectancy and a hint of dread. It’s Thanksgiving morning. Do I know where my daughter is?

“Okay, it’s Mike.” This is not how he talks, either. My answer-voice has startled him. He says nothing, as if someone’s holding a loaded gun on him.

“What time is it?” I say. I’m confused from too deep sleep, where I believe I was having a pleasant dream about eating.

“Eight forty-five. Did you hear my message last night?”

“No.” Half true. I didn’t listen past the Buddhist flounces and flourishes.

“Okay—” He’s about to tell me it’s been one heckuva hard decision, but the world’s a changing place and, even for Buddhists, is entirely created by our aspirations and actions, and suffering doesn’t happen without a cause and effort is the precondition of positive actions—the very reason I didn’t listen last night. I’m in bed, fully clothed, with my shoes still on, the counterpane wrapped around me like a tortilla. “Could you drive over to 118 Timbuktu at eleven and meet me?”

“What the hell for?”

“I sold it.” Mike’s accentless voice is fruity with exuberance. “Cash deal.”

“One eighteen Timbuktu’s
already
sold.” I’m about to be aggravated. Acceptance is right away posing a challenge. I’m relieved, of course, it’s not Clarissa telling me she and lizard Thom are married, that I somehow missed all the big clues yesterday. “It’s up on trucks,” I say. “I’m moving it over to 629 Whitman.” Our Little Manila section, which has begun gentrifying at an encouraging rate. He knows all this.

“My people want the house right now, as is.” It’s as though the whole idea tickles him silly and has elevated his voice half an octave. “They want to take over the moving and put it on a lot on Terpsichore that I’m ready to sell them.”

“Why can’t this wait till Monday?” I’m about to doze off, though I have to piss (the third time since 2 a.m.). Outside my open window, up in the scrubbed azure firmament, white terns tilt and noiselessly wheel. The air around my covers feels soft and cushiony-springlike, though it’s late November. Laughter filters up from the beach—laughter that’s familiar.

“You hold the deed on that, Frank.” Mike uses my name only at moments of all else failing. Usually, he calls me nothing at all, as if my name was an impersonal pronoun. “They have to buy it direct from you. And they’re ready right now. I thought you might just drive over.”

He, of course, is right. I sold 118 Timbuktu in September to a couple from Lebanon (Morris County), the Stevicks, who planned to demolish it first thing next spring and bring in a new manufactured dwelling from Indiana that had a lifetime guarantee and all the best built-ins. I stepped back in and offered to take the house in lieu of commission, since it’s a perfectly good building. They agreed and I’ve been arranging to move it to a lot I own on Whitman, where it’ll fit in and bring a good price because the inventory’s low over there. At 1,300 sq. ft., it’ll be bigger than most of its Whitman Street neighbors and be exactly the kind of small American ranch any Filipino who used to be a judge in Luzon, but who over here finds himself running a lawn-care business, would see as a dream come true. Arriba House Recyclers (Bolivians) from Keansburg have been doing the work on a time-permits basis, and throwing me a break. I’m looking at a good profit slice by the time the whole deal’s over. Except, if I sell it off the truck like a consignment of hot Sonys, get a good price (less Mike’s 2 percent), dispense with the rigamarole of moving a house up Route 35, getting a foundation dug and poured and utilities run, paying for all the permits and line-clearance fees, I’d need to have my head examined not to do Mike’s deal on the spot. It’s true that as deeded owner, only I can convey it if we’re conveying this morning. (We call deals like this WACs, for “write a check.”) Only I’m not certain I have the heart for real estate on Thanksgiving morning, even if all I have to do is say yes, sign a bill of sale and shake a stranger’s hand. The Next Level and universal acceptance may be closing the shutters on the realtor in me.

I haven’t spoken for several moments, and may have gone to sleep on the phone. I hear laughing again, laughing that’s definitely known to me but unplaceable. Then a voice talking loudly, then more laughter.

“Can we do it?” Mike’s voice is forceful, anxious, fervent—odd for a Tibetan who’d rather cut a fart in public than seem agitated. Possibly I’ve discouraged him. What about Tommy Benivalle?

“Will I come where?”

“To Timbuktu.” A pause. “One eighteen. Eleven o’clock.”

“Oh,” I say, pushing my head—still sore from Bob Butts’ wrenching it—deep into the yielding pillow, letting air exit my lungs slowly, then breathing in body odor in my winding-sheet, loving being where I am, but where I cannot stay much longer. “Sure,” I say. “Sure, sure.”

“Terrific!” Mike says. “That’s terrific.” He says “terrific” in his old Calcutta telemarketer style, as when a housewife in Pennsauken tumbled to a set of plastic-wicker outdoor chairs and a secret bond was forged because she thought he was white: “Terrific. That’s terrific. I know you’re going to enjoy that, ma’am. Expect delivery in six to ten weeks.”

T
he laughing voice, the laughing man I see when I stand to the window for the day’s first gaze at the beach, the sky, the waves is my son Paul, hard at work with a shovel, digging a hole the size of a small grave in the rain-caked sand between the beach and the ocean-facing foundation wall of my house, where some rhododendrons were planted by Sally but never thrived. The hole must be for his time capsule, which Clarissa told me about but which doesn’t seem present now. What would a time capsule look like? How deep would you need to bury one for it to “work”? What haywire impulse would make anyone think this is a proper idea for Thanksgiving? And why do I not know the answer to these questions?

Paul is not alone. He’s spiritedly shoveling while talking animatedly from three feet down in his hole to the tiny Sumitomo banker, Mr. Oshi, who’s surprisingly back from work and standing motionless beside Paul’s hole, dressed in a dark business suit as shovel-fulls of sand fly past onto a widening pile. Paul’s hair looks thinner than when I saw him last spring, and he’s heavier and is wearing what look like cargo shorts and a tee-shirt that shows his belly. He has the same goatee that connects to his mustache and surrounds his mouth like a golf hole. Though his haircut, I can see, is new—a style that I believe is called the “mullet,” and that many New Jersey young adults wear, and also professional hockey players, but that on Paul looks like a Prince Galahad. Mr. Oshi appears to be listening as Paul yaks away from his hole, haw-hawing and occasionally gesturing out toward the ocean with his shovel (from my utility room, no doubt), nodding theatrically, then going on digging. Mr. Oshi may also be trying to speak, but Paul has him trapped—which is his usual conversational strategy. Two dachshunds are rocketing around off the leash through the dune grass (where they’re forbidden) and out onto the beach, then back round the house and the hole and out of sight. These must be Mr. Oshi’s wiener dogs, since he’s holding in each hand what looks like a sandwich bag of dog crap that I’m sure he’d like to get rid of. Such is the private nature of neighborly life on Poincinet Road, that I’ve never seen these dogs before.

As the first thing one sees on Thanksgiving morning, it’s an unexpected sight—my son and Mr. Oshi in converse. Though I’m sure it’s what the higher-ups in Sumitomo hope for when they dispatch a Mr. Oshi to the Shore: chance encounters with the natives, cultural incumbency taking root, exchange of ground-level demographic and financial data, gradual acceptance of
differences,
leading quickly to social invisibility. Then
bingo!
The buggers own the beach, the ocean, your house, your memories, and your kids are on a boat to Kyoto for immersion language training.

Still, it’s saving that I’ve seen Paul before he sees me, since I’d begun—terrible to admit this—to dread our moment of meeting following last spring’s miscommunication. I’ve pictured myself standing in the middle of some indistinct room (my living room); I’m smiling, waiting—like a prisoner who hears the footfalls of the warden, the priest and the last-mile crew thudding the concrete floor—anticipating my son to come down a flight of stairs, open a closed door, emerge from a bathroom, fly unzipped, and me just being there, grinningly
in loco parentis,
unable to utter intelligible sounds, all possible good embargoed, nothing promising ahead. No wonder fathers and sons is the subject of enigmatic and ponderous literatures. What the hell’s it all about? Why even go near each other if we’re going to feel such aversion? Only the imagination has a prayer here, since all logic fails.

What I desire, of course, is that the freshening spirit of acceptance render today free of significant pretexts, contexts, subtexts—texts of any kind; be just a day when I’m not the theme, the constant, not expected to make things better, having now, with an optimistic outlook, put holiday events into motion. (I’m by nature a better guest than a host anyway.) But isn’t that how we all want Thanksgiving to be? Perfectly generic—the state of mind we enjoy best. In contrast to Xmas, New Year’s, Easter, Independence Day and even Halloween—the fraught, load-bearing holidays? We all project ourselves, just the way I do, as regular humans capable of experiencing a regular human holiday with selected others. And so we should. It was what I intended: Acceptance—a spirit to be thankful for.

Only easier said than done.

The beach beyond the grassy furze—where my son’s digging away and lecturing poor captive Mr. Oshi—is nonetheless a good beach for a holiday morning. After last night’s drought-ending rain, the air has softened and become salt-fragrant and lush, tropical depression Wayne having missed its chance with us. Light is moist and sun-shot. A tide is changing, so that fishermen, their bait pails left back on the sand, have edged out into the tame surf to cast their mackerel chunks almost to where a pair of wet-suited kayakers is plying a course up the coast. Tire tracks dent the beach where the Shore Police have passed. A few straggler tourists have returned with the good weather to stroll, throw Frisbees, shout gaily, let their kids collect seashells above the waves’ extent. Mr. Oshi’s dachshunds skirmish about like water sprites. Surely here in the late-autumnal tableau one can feel the holiday’s sweetness, the chance that normal things can happen to normal folk, that the sun will tour the sky and all find easy rest at day’s end, full of gratitude on gratitude’s holy day.

Though my son’s vocalizing and excavating make me know that for normal things to happen to normal folk, some selected normal folk in a frame of mind of acceptance, prudence and gratitude need to get kick-started and off the dime. Since the day is full, and it is here.

I
’ve awakened to several new certainties, which make themselves known, as certainties often do, when I’m in the shower—the first pertaining to the day’s clothing commitments. As I’ve already said, I prefer mostly standard-issue “clothes.” Medium-weight chinos I buy from a New Hampshire mail-order firm where they keep my size, cuffing preferences, inseam—even which side I “dress” on—stored in a computer. I generally wear canvas or rawhide belts, tabbed to the season; white or pale oxford-cloth shirts, or knitted pullovers in a variety of shades—both long sleeve and short—along with deck shoes, penny loafers or bluchers all from the same catalog, where they showcase everything on unmemorably attractive human mannequins, pictured beside roaring fireplaces, out training their Labradors or on the banks of rilling trout streams. I hardly have to say that such clothing identifies me as the southern-raised frat boy I am (or was), since it’s a style ideal for warm spring days, perched on the balcony at Sigma Chi, cracking wise at passing Chi O’s, books to bosoms, headed to class. These preferences work very well in the house-selling business, where what I wear (like what I drive) is intended to make as little statement as possible, letting me portray myself to clients as the non-risk-taking everyman with a voice of reason, who only wants the best for all, same as they want for themselves. Which happens to be true.

However, for today I’ve decided to switch away from regular clothes, based on the first perceived certainty: that something different is needed. My new attire is
not
to dress up like a Pilgrim, ready to deliver an oration like the kids over in the Haddam Interpretive Center. I merely mean to wear blue relaxed-fit 501s—I had them already, just never thought to put them on—white Nikes from a brief try at tennis two years back, a yellow polo and a blue Michigan sweatshirt with a maize block-M, which the alumni association sent me for becoming a lifetime member (there was other stuff—a substandard-size football, a Wolverine bed toy, a leather-bound volume of robust imbibing songs—all of which I threw in the trash). I’m dressing this way strictly for Paul’s benefit, since it will conceivably present me as less obviously myself—less a “father,” with less a shared and problematic history, even less a real estate agent, which I know he thinks is an unfunny joke (a greeting-card writer being a giant step up). Dressing like an orthodontist from Bay City down for the Wisconsin game will also portray me as a willing figure of fun and slightly stupid in a self-mortifying way Paul generally appreciates, permitting us both (I hope) to make wry, get-the-ball-rolling jokes at my expense.