The Lay of the Land (65 page)

Now, though, I believe is the time—if ever one was ordained—for Bernice and me to lash our tiny boats together, at least for the day, and set sail a ways toward sunset. Nothing permanent, nothing that even needs to last past dark, nothing specifically venereal or proto-conjugal (unless that just happens), but still an occasion, an eleventh-hour turn toward the unexpected—the very thing that can happen in life to let us know we’re human, and that could even prove I’m the handful Bernice always knew I’d be and perhaps still am. All this, of course, if it seems like a good idea to her.

Neptune’s Daily Catch Bistro, I already know from our local Shore weekly, is serving its twenty-dollar turkey ’n trimmings buffet to all Ortley Beach seniors, eleven to two. Bernice—because she casually told me—is without companionship today and only working to give herself something to do, then heading home with a jug of Chablis to “watch the Vikes and Dallas at 4:05,” before turning in early. My guess is if I cruise in right at one, almost now, and tell her I’m taking her away for a holiday feast, she’ll beg off with the boss, leave her apron on the doorknob, see the whole idea as a complete blast that I’ve had planned for weeks, feel secretly flattered and relieved and sure she’s had me pegged right and that I’m fuller of surprises than she imagined and that all her appreciation of me these years wasn’t wrong or wasted. In other words, she’ll recognize that I recognize
her
as the ideal woman, and that even if she’s home in time for the nightly news, she’ll have gotten more than she bargained for—which is all that usually counts with humans.

And as an added inducement, bringing Bernice Podmanicsky for Thanksgiving dinner will drive my kids crazy. Worse than if I’d brought home a Finnish midget from the circus, a six-foot-eight fag comb-out assistant from Kurl Up ’n Dye in Lavallette, or a truckload of talking parrots that sing Christmas carols
a cappella.
It’ll drive them—Paul especially—into paralyzed, abashed and scalding, renunciating silence, which is what I may now require of my Thanksgiving festivity. Loathing will run at warp speed. Sinister “What’s happened to
him
?” grimaces will radar between siblings who already don’t like each other. Your kids may be the hapless victims of divorce and spend their lives “working out” their “issues” on everybody in sight, but they damn straight don’t want you to have any issues, or for
their
boats to get rocked while they’re doing their sanctified “work.” They want instead for you to provide them a stable environment for their miseries (they might as well
be
adopted). Except my view is that if kids are happy to present us aging parents with their own improbabilities, why not return the favor? A diverse table of Paul, Jill, Clarissa, Thom, Bernice and myself seems more or less perfect. As is often the case, given time, “things” come into better focus.

And yet. Best case? It could bring out the unforeseeable best in everybody and cause Thanksgiving to blossom into the extended-family, come-one-come-all good fellowship the Pilgrims might (for a millisecond) have thought they were ringing in by inviting the baffled, mostly starved Indians to their table. Paul’s time capsule could turn out to be the rallying projectile he may—or may not—want it to be. Clarissa could send Thom away two-thirds through the bulgur course, and we could all laugh like chimps at what a sorry sack he was. Bernice could do her full repertoire of America’s Dairyland imitations. We might even ask the Feensters in and watch them combust. I could be made happy by any or all or none of these, and the day could end no worse than it began. Though I’d still like Bernice Podmanicsky with me, just as my personal
friend
against the difficulties that are likely waiting. She would think it was all—whatever it was—a riot or a trip or awesome, and be agreeable when we excused ourselves from the table to take a sunset stroll on the beach, where we could both make ourselves feel ideal all over again, after which I could take her home for the second half of the Vikes’ game—which I might stay for. I’d tell Sally all about it later and be certain she wouldn’t care.

C
entral Boulevard enters Ortley Beach from Seaside Heights without fanfare—both being Route 35—the same no-skyline weather-beaten townscape of closed sub shops, blue Slurpee stands, tropical fish outlets and metal-detector rentals, where I’m thinking the 5-K runners must have now come and gone, since I see none of them. In the election three weeks ago—the life-threatening part of which is still unsettled in the Florida court—Ortley Beach gave its own voters their chance to ratify a non-binding “opinion” by the Boro attorney that the town could secede from New Jersey and join a new entity called “South Jersey.” But like our naming-rights initiative, this was hooted down by Republicans as being fiscal suicide, not to mention civically odd and bad for business. Sea-Clift—nearer the end of Barnegat Neck, and farther south—would’ve ended up marooned in “Old Jersey,” tolls could’ve been exacted just for the privilege of leaving town, while Ortley would have had a different governor and a state bird. Municipal conflict would’ve erupted, had cooler heads not prevailed. Though even now I see a few inflaming
SECESSION OR DIE
stickers still plastered on stop signs and a few juice-shop windows. It’s always been a strange place here, though you can’t tell by looking.

What I see as I approach the Neptune’s Daily Catch doesn’t make my heart hopeful. No cars are parked in front. The blue neon
FISH
sign is turned off. As I pull to the curb, inside appears empty. Grainy daylight falls in through the big windows, turning the interior dishwater gray. Chairs are upside down on tabletops. Next door, the Women of Substance second-hand shop is closed. The Parallel Universe video arcade is open three doors down, but only a thin bald man’s standing in the door alone, reading a magazine. Four men in khaki clothing and heavy corduroy jackets wait at the corner under the Garden State Parkway sign, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee from the Wawa across Central. Mexicans, these are. Illegals—unlike my Hondurans—hoping to be picked up for a job across the bridge, unaware today’s a holiday. They eye me and laugh as if I’m the cops and they’re invisible.

The thought, however, that I may be wrong and Bernice is inside at a back table having an Irish coffee alone, awaiting opening time, makes me get out and peer through the plate-glass window. Arnie Sikma, the owner, is an old Reed College SDSer who’s evolved into a community-activist, small-business booster, and has stuck various groups’ advertising stickers on his front window beside the door.
ORTLEY, AN UNUSUAL NAME FOR THE USUAL PLACE. WE ROOT FOR THE PHILLIES. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS
(from Gulf War days).
PROTECT RAPTORS, NOT RAPISTS. THIS, TOO, SHALL PASS—JERSEY SHORE NEPHROLOGY CLINIC. PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE…SOMEWHERE
(a hospice in Point Pleasant).

But no Bernice when I peer in between my cupped hands. Or anyone. Arnie’s left the Christmas Muzak on outside—“Good King Wenceslas” sung by a choir. “Yon-der pea-sant, who is he, where and what his dwel-ling—” No one out in the cold hears it but me and the Mexicans.

Though a hand-written note scotch-taped to the door announces that, “We will be closed Thanksgiving Day due to a loss in our family. God Bless You All. The Mgt.”—naturally a sign that alarms me. Since does it mean
family
family (Arnie’s of Dutch extraction in Hudson, New York, up-river—a distant relation of the original patroons)? Or does it mean extended family? The Neptune’s Daily Catch Bistro “family” of trusted employees. Does it mean Bernice, heretofore scheduled to work the buffet? Though wouldn’t it mention her name—like the Van Tuyll daughter Ann told me about two nights ago? “Our trusted and beloved Miss B—”

A hot sizzling sensation spreads up my cold neck, then spreads down again. How can I find out? I once called
information
to learn if Bernice was listed, in case I someday decided to call her and needed to be made to feel like my best self in return for a movie ticket to the Toms River Multiplex and a late dinner at Bump’s. I found out she possessed a phone but didn’t choose to list its number. Waitresses rarely do. I couldn’t very well tell the operator, “Yeah, but she thinks I’m great. It’s fine. I won’t give the number to anybody or do anything weird.” Those innocent days are behind us now.

Gusty ocean air with a strong grease smell in it pushes a white Styrofoam container along the sidewalk—the kind of container you’d carry your unfinished fried calamari home in. One of the khaki-suited Mexicans gives the container a soccer kick out into the boulevard, which inspires another, smaller Mexican to address the box with a complex series of side kicks and heel kicks that finally send it flying in the air. His associates all laugh and sing out “Ronal
dito
,” which amuses the kicker, who sashays back up onto the curb and makes them all howl.

A skinny, elderly bald man in red running shorts and a blue singlet with a 5-K card on his chest—#174—glides past us up Central on bulky in-lines, arm swings propelling him like a speed skater, one hand tucked behind, his old eagle’s face as serene as the breeze. He is heading home. The Mexicans all eye him with amusement.

I gaze up to the woolen sky and think of good-soul Bernice, her sweet breath, full smiling lips, dainty ankles, dense virile hair not everyone would go for and that possibly I didn’t go for or else I’d know her phone number. Where is she today? Safe? Sound? Not so good? How would I find out? Call Arnie Sikma at home the minute I arrive. Ask for her number as a special favor. High up and to the north, a pale blue and optimistic fissure has opened in the undercloud. Two jet contrails, one southerly, one headed east and out to sea, have crossed there, leaving a giant and, for an instant, perfect
X
at 39,000 feet above where I am, in Ortley, outside a good fish place, contemplating the life of a friend.
X
marks my spot (and every place else that can see it). “Begin here. This is where I left it. This is where the gold is. This is—” what?

Only the most dry-mouthed Cartesian wouldn’t see this as a patent signal, a communiqué from the spheres, an important box on an important form with my name on top—X’d in or X’d out, counted present or absent. You’d just need to know what the fucker means, wouldn’t you? There may have been others. Two swans on the bay shore. A quick red fox in the bedroom. A letter. A call. Three boats. All can be signage. I’d thought Ralph’s finality, my acceptance and succession to the Next Level and general fittedness to meet my Maker were my story, what the audience would know once my curtain closed—my, so-to-speak, character. “He made peace with things, finally, old Frank.” “He was kind of a shit-bird, but he got it sorted out pretty good just before—” “He actually seemed clear-sighted, damn near saint-like toward the end there—” This happens when you have cancer, though it’s not a fun happening.

Except now there’s
more
? Just when you think you’ve been admitted to the boy-king’s burial chamber and can breathe the rich, ancient captured air with somber satisfaction, you find out it’s just another anteroom? That there’s more that bears watching, more signs requiring interpretation, that what you thought was all, isn’t? That this isn’t
it
? That there’s no
it,
only
is.
Hard to know if this is heartening or disheartening news to a man who, as my son says, believes in development.

The cloud fissure has now closed primly, and what was a sign—like a rainbow—is no more. Somehow I know that Bernice Podmanicsky is not the family member lost. She’d laugh to know I even worried about her. “Oh, handsome”—she’d beam at me—“I didn’t know you cared. You’re just such an unusual man, aren’t ya? A real handful. Some lucky girl—” It’s odd how our fears, the ones we didn’t know we had, alter our sight line and make us see things that never were.

The Mexicans are all looking at me as if I’ve been carrying on a boisterous conversation with myself. Possibly it’s my block-M. I should take it off and give it to them. Their faces are serious, their small grabby hands jammed in their tattered jacket pockets. Their expectancy of work is being clouded over by my suspicious starings into the Bistro and the firmament. They are religious men and on the lookout for signs of their own, one of which I may have become. Possibly I’m “touched” and am about to be drawn up into heaven by a lustrous beam of light and they (in the good version) will find true vocations at last: to tell the thing they saw and of its wonders. Is that not the final wish of all of us on earth? To testify of our witness to wonders?

But as an assurance, since I cannot ascend to heaven in front of them today, I’d still like to speak something typically First World and welcoming, put them off their guard. We are together, after all. Simple me. Simple them.

Only when I turn their way, a welcome grin gladdening my cheeks, my eyes crinkling up happy, my mind concocting a formulation in their mother tongue—
“Hola. ¿Cómo están? ¿Pasando un buen día?”
—they stiffen, set their narrow shoulders and lock their knees inside their khakis, their faces organized to say they want
nada
of me, seek no assurance, offer none. So that all I can do is freeze my grin like a crazy man caught in his craziness. They look away at the empty boulevard to search for the truck that isn’t coming. For all five of us, together and apart, the moment for signs goes past.

H
eaded home now, fully contextualized, vacant of useful longing. Bernice could’ve conferred a sporty insularity, made me feel my own weight less. Even un-ideal women can do this. But help’s not available, which is a legitimate mode of acceptance. It just doesn’t feel good.

Traffic lights are working again, candy-cane ornaments weakly lit. Commerce is flickering to life as I drive out of Seaside Park and reenter Sea-Clift.
LIQUOR
has illuminated its big yellow letters at noon, and cars are flocking. The drive-thru ATM at South Shore Savings is doing a smart business, as is the adult books, Guppies to Puppies and the bottle redemption center—the former Ford dealership. The Wiggle Room has opened up, and a hefty blue New Jersey Waste snail-back is swaying into its back alley. There are even tourists outside the mini-golf/batting cage, their nonchalant gestures betraying seasonal uncertainty, their gazes skyward. The green EMS wagon rests back in its Fire Department bay, the same crew as earlier out front under the waving American flag, sharing a smoke and a joke with the two jodhpured motorcycle cops who guarded the race. The Tru-Value is holding its “Last Chance Y-2K Special” on plastic containers and gas masks.
THE FUTURE WAS A BOMB
, their hand-lettered sign says.