The Lay of the Land (66 page)

Many of the 5-K runners are here straggling home along the sidewalks and down the residential side streets, their race run, their faces relaxed, limbs loosened by honest non-cutthroat competition, their water bottles empty, their gazes turned toward what’s next in the way of healthy, wholesome Thanksgiving partaking. (There’s no sign of the Africans.) I still wouldn’t want to be any of them. Though one scrawny red-shoed runner waves at my car as I pass—I have no idea who—someone I sold a house to or busted my ass trying, but left a good impression of the kinda guy I am. I give a honk but head on.

When I cruise past my Realty-Wise office, Mike’s Infiniti sits by itself in front. The pizza place is lighted and going, though no one seems to want a pizza for Thanksgiving. Doubtless, Mike’s at his desk tweaking his business plan, re-conferring with his new friend, the money bags. He may be trying the Bagosh family on his cell before they hit the Parkway after lunch. I lack the usual gusto to go have a look-see at what he’s up to—which makes business itself seem far away and its hand-over a sounder idea. How, though, will I feel to “have sold” real estate and sell it no more? The romance of it could fade once the past tense takes over. Different from, “Well, yeah, I usta fly 16’s up in that Bacca Valley. Pretty hairy up there.” Or, “Our whole lab shared credit on the malaria cure.” The only way to keep the glamour lights on in the real-estate commitment is to keep doing it. Do it till you drop dead, so you never have to look back and see the shadows. Most of the old-timers know that, which is why so many go feet first. This won’t please Mike, but fuck Mike. It’s my business, not his.

Ahead, beyond the old shuttered Dad ’n Lad, where the Boro of Sea-Clift originally ended because the topsoil ran out and the primeval white sand beach took up, the old Ocean Vista Cemetery, where Sea-Clift’s citizens were buried back in the twenties, lies shabbily ignored and gone to weeds. The Boro officially maintains it, keeps up its New Orleans-style wrought iron fence and little arched filigree gate that opens pleasantly down a slender
allée
three-quarters of a city block toward the sea, where the ocean vista’s long been blocked by grandfathered frame residences that have gone to seed themselves but can’t be replaced. No one is currently at rest in Ocean Vista, not even gravestones remain. The ground—alongside the Dad ’n Lad—looks like nothing but a small-size shard of excess urban landscape awaiting assignment by developers who’ll tear down the whole block of elderly structures and put up a Red Roof Inn or a UPS store—the same as happened on a grand scale in Atlantic City.

The particular reason our only town cemetery no longer has residents is that the great-great-grandchildren of Sea-Clift’s first Negro pioneer, a freed slave known only as “Jonah,” somehow discovered him interred plumb in the middle of the otherwise-white cemetery, and began agitating at the state level for a monument solemnizing his life and toilsome times as a “black trailblazer” back when being a trailblazer wasn’t cool. Jonah’s progeny turned out to be noisy, well-heeled Philadelphia and D.C. plutocrat lawyers and M.D.’s, who wanted to have their ancestor memorialized as another stop on the Coastal Heritage Trail, with an interactive display about his life and the lives of folk like him who valiantly diversified the Shore—a story that was possibly not going to be all that flattering to his white contemporaries.

Whereupon all hell broke loose. The town elders, who’d always known about Jonah’s resting place and felt fine about him sharing it with their ancestors, did not, however, want him “stealing” the cemetery and posthumously militating for importance he apparently hadn’t claimed in life. Jonah had his rightful place, it was felt, among other Sea-Clifters, and that was enough. The grandchildren, however, sniffing prejudice, commenced court proceedings and EEOC actions to have the Boro Council sued in federal court. Everything got instantly blown out of proportion, at which point an opportunistic burial-vault company with European Alliance affiliations in Brick Township offered free of charge to dig up and re-inter anybody whose family wanted its loved one to enjoy better facilities in a new and treeless memory park they had land for out Highway 88. Everyone—there were only fifteen families—said sure. The town issued permits. All the graves—except Jonah’s—were lovingly opened, their sacred contents hearsed away, until in a month’s time poor old Jonah had the cemetery all to his lonesome. Whereupon, the litigious Philadelphians decided Jonah and his significance had been municipally disrespected and so applied for a permit themselves and moved him to Cherry Hill, where people apparently know better how to treat a hero.

The town is still proprietor of the cemetery and awaits the happy day when the Red Roof site-evaluation crew shows up seeking a variance and a deconsecration order. For a time—two winters ago—I proposed buying the ground myself and turning it into a vernal park as a gesture of civic giving, while retaining development rights should the moment ever come. I even considered not deconsecrating it and having myself buried there—a kingdom of one. This was, of course, before my prostate issues. I’d always pondered—without a smidge of trepidation—where I’d “end up,” since once you wander far from your own soil, you never know where your final resting place might be. Which is why many people don’t stray off their porch or far from familiar sights and sounds. Because if you’re from Hog Dooky, Alabama, you don’t want to wind up dead and anonymously buried in Metuchen, New Jersey. In my case, I thought it would’ve saved my children the trouble of knowing what in the hell to do with “me,” and just deciding to entrust my remains to some broken-down old Cap’n Mouzakis who’d “return” me to the sea from whence as a frog I came. You could say it’s a general problem, however—uncertainty over where and how you want to be eternally stowed. Either it represents your last clinging to life, or else it’s the final muddled equivocation about the life you’ve actually lived.

Not surprisingly, insider development interests on the Dollars For Doers Council saw disguised dreams of empire behind my petition and declined my cash offer for the cemetery. The “civic giving” part put them on their guard. Which was and is fine with me. Money not spent is money saved, in my economy. Though it has left as an open subject the awkward issue of my ending-up formalities. I have a will which leaves the house and Realty-Wise to Sally and all remaining assets to the kids—not much, though they’ll get plenty from their mom, including a membership in the Huron Mountain Club. But that picture’s different since Sally left for Mull, and could shift again, since she could come back and Mike now wants the business. I’d even thought the three of us nuclear-family components might sit around a congenial breakfast table during the coming days and talk these sensitive matters into commonsense resolution. But that was prior to reexposure to Paul (and Jill), and hearing of his secret dreams to be my business partner. And before Clarissa hied off to Atlantic City, leaving me with the uneasy sensation she’ll return changed. In other words, events have left life and my grasp on the future in as fucked-up a shape as I can imagine them. Life alters when you get sick, no matter what I told Ann. Don’t let any of these Sunny Jims tell you different.

W
hat I don’t expect to find in my driveway is activity. But activity is what I find. Next door at the Feensters’, as well. Thanksgiving, in my playbook, is an indoor event acted out between kitchen and table, table and TV, TV and couch (and later bed). Outdoor activity, particularly driveway activity, foreshadows problems and events unwanted: genies exiting bottles, dikes bursting, de-stability at the top—anti-Thanksgiving gremlins sending celebrants scattering for their cars. The outcome I didn’t want.

The Feensters appear unimplicated. Nick has set up shop in his driveway and is giving his twin ’56 vintage Vettes the careful hand-waxing they deserve and frequently get (cold-weather bonding issues, what the hell). Drilla, in a skirt and sweater, is seated on the front step, hugging her knees and petting Bimbo in her lap as if now was July. Nick is, as usual, luridly turned out in one of his metallic Lycra bodysuits—electric blue, showing off his muscles and plenty of bulgy dick—the same outfit the neighborhood is used to seeing during his and Drilla’s stern-miened beach constitutionals, when they each listen to separate Walkmen. Though because it’s wintry, Nick has added some kind of space-age silver-aluminum anorak you’d buy in catalogs only lottery winners from Bridgeport get sent for free. Seen through his derelict topiary, he is a strange metallic sight on Thanksgiving. Though if Nick wasn’t such an asshole, there’d be something touching about the two of them, since clearly they don’t know what to do with themselves today, and could easily end up gloomy and alone at the Ruby Tuesday’s in Belmar. Likewise, if Nick weren’t such an asshole, I’d walk over and ask them to come join our family sociality, since there’s too much food anyway. Possibly next year. I give him a noncommittal wave as I pass and turn in my own drive. Nick repays it with a black stare of what looks like disgust, though Drilla, clutching the dog, waves back smally and smiles in the invisible sunshine—her smile indicating that if a man like Nick is your husband, nothing’s easy in life.

However, it’s my own driveway that’s cause for concern. If I’d noticed in time, I might’ve driven back to the office, listened to Mike’s business proposal, sold the whole shitaree, then come home a half hour later in a changed frame of mind.

Paul and his lofty Jill are out on the pea-gravel drive in holiday attire and absorbed in an arms-folded, head-nodding confab with a man I don’t know but whose chocolate brown Crown Vic sits on the road by the arborvitae and Paul’s ramshackle gray Saab. Possibly this is a client prospect who’s tracked me down, holiday or no, in hopes I’ll have the key to the beach house he’s noticed in the
Buyer’s Guide
and can’t wait to see. Paul may be dry-running his new agent’s persona, gassing about time capsules, greeting-card pros and cons, the Chiefs’ chances for the Super Bowl and how special it is being a New Jersey native.

Only this guy’s no realty walk-up, nor is his car a usual car. His body language lacks the tense but casual hands-in-pockets, feet-apart posture of protective customer indecision. This man is dapper and small, with both hands free at his sides like a cop, with thick blunt-cut Neapolitan hair, a long brown leather jacket over a brown wool polo and heavy black brogues with telltale crepe soles. He looks like a cop because he is a cop. Plenty of ordinary Americans living ordinary citizen lives dress exactly this way, but nobody looks this way dressed this way but cops. It’s no wonder crime’s on the uptick. They’ve given away the element of surprise to the element—to the window bashers, hospital bombers and sign stealers of the world.

But why is a cop in my driveway? Why is his brown cop car with
MUNICIPAL
license plates conspicuously parked in front of my house on Thanksgiving, dragging my family outside when law-abiding citizens should be inside stuffing their faces and arguing?

Clarissa. A heart flutter, a new burning up my back. He is an emissary of doleful news. Like in
The Fighting Sullivans,
when the grief squad marches up the steps. Her re-entry to conventionality has already come to ruin. Not thinkable.

All three turn as I climb out, leaving Mike’s business plan on the seat, my gait hitched again and slowed. I’m smiling—but only out of habit. The Feensters—I couldn’t hear it from my car—have their boom box at its usual high decibels, apparently to aid in waxing. “Lisbon Antigua” again—their way of getting their Thanksgiving message out: Fuck you.

“Hi,” I say. “What’s the trouble here, Officer?” I intend this to be funny, but it isn’t. There can’t be bad news.

“This is Detective Marinara, Frank,” Paul says in the most normal of imaginable voices, tuned to the exquisite pleasure of saying “Detective Marinara.” I can smell cops. Though this, thanks to the signs above, will not be about Clarissa, but me.

Paul and Jill—she’s looking at me sorrowfully, as though I’m Paul’s crippled parent—have transubstantiated themselves since our basement get-together. Jill has severely pulled much of her long, dense yellow hair “back,” but left skimpy fringe bangs, plus a thick, concupiscent braid that swags down behind her like a rope. From her travel wardrobe, she’s chosen a green flare-bottomed pantsuit with some sort of shiny golden underhue and a pair of clunky black shoes that show off the length of her feet and that, as an ensemble, renders her basically gender-neutral. She’s also attached a flesh-tinted holiday hand prosthesis, barely detectable as not the real thing, though not flexible like a hand you’d want. Paul, from somewhere, has found a strange suit—a too-large summer-weight blue-gray-and-pink plaid with landing-strip lapels, gutter-deep cuffs and English vents—a style popular ten years before he was born and that everyone joked about even then. With his mullet, his uncouth beard-stache and ear stud, his suit makes him look like a burlesque comedian. He looks as if he could break out a ukelele and start crooning in an Al Jolson voice. Just seeing him makes me long for sweet and affirming Bernice. She could set things right in a heartbeat, though I don’t really know her.

“I’m impressed with your place here, Mr. Bascombe.” Detective Marinara scans around and grins at the way some people can live, but not him: ocean-front contemporary, lots of glass and light, high ceilings—the works. He’s a small, handsome, feline-looking man with long, spidery fingers, dark worried eyes and a small shapely nose. He could’ve been a sixth-man guard in Division III, maybe for Muhlenberg, who only heeded the call to police work because of his “soshe” degree and a desire to stay close to his folks in Dutch Neck. These guys make detective in a hurry and aren’t adept at cracking skulls.

“I’d be happy to sell it to you,” I say, and try to look happy. “I’ll move out today.” I’m not comfortable standing in front of my house with a cop, as if I’m soon to be leaving in handcuffs. Though it could happen to any of us.

“I was down at my sister’s,” Detective Marinara says. “I told you she lives in Barnegat Acres.” His interested eyes survey around professionally. They pass my busted duct-taped window, Sally’s LeBaron, pass the Feensters, my son, Jill. “They do the whole Italian spread,” he says. “You need to take a breather though. So I wandered down here. Your son happened to be outside.”