I park in my drive and go in to put on new clothes. Hoving Road is somnolent, as blue-shaded and leaden as a Bonnard. The Deffeyes’ sprinkler hisses, and up a few houses the Justice has set a badminton net onto his long lawn. An old Ford Woody sits in his drive. Somewhere near abouts I hear the sounds of light chatter-talk and glasses clinking in our cozy local backyard fashion — an Easter Egg hunt finished, the children asleep, the sound of a single swimmer diving in. But this is the day’s extent. A private stay-home with the family till past dark. Wreaths are off all doors. The world once more a place we know well.
Inside, my house has a strange public smell to it, a smell I would like on any other day but that today seems unwholesome. Upstairs, I put Merthiolate and a big band-aid on my knee, and change to chinos and a faded red madras shirt I bought at Brooks Brothers the year my book was published. A casual look can sometimes keep you remote from events.
I haven’t thought much about Walter. Occasionally his face has plunged into my thinking, an expectant sad-eyed face, the sober, impractical fellow I stood railside with on the Mantoloking Belle speculating about the lives ashore we were both embedded in, how we tended to see the world from two pretty distinct angles, but that on balance it didn’t matter much.
Which was all I needed! I didn’t need to know about Yolanda and Eddie Pitcock. Certainly not about his monkeyshines at the Americana. We didn’t need to become established. That is not my long suit.
No one answers when I call up to Bosobolo. He and his Miss Right, D.D., are no doubt being entertained “in the home” by some old chicken-necked Christology professor, and at this very moment he is probably backed into a bookshelved corner, clutching his ebony elbow and a glass of chablis, while Dr. So-and-so prattles about the hermeneutics of getting the goods on that old radical Paul the Apostle. Bosobolo, I’m sure, has other goods on his mind but is learning to be a first-class American. Though he could have it worse. He could still be running around in the jungle, dressed in a palm tutu. Or he could be me, morgue-bound and fighting a willowy despair.
My plan, which I’ve come to momentarily, is to call X, go do what I have to at the police, possibly see X — at her house (a remote chance to see my children) — then do what I haven’t a clue. The plan doesn’t reach far, though the literal possibilities might be just a source of worry.
A silent red “3” blinks on the answering machine, when I go to call X. “1” is in all likelihood Vicki wondering if I made it home safely and wanting to set up a powwow somewhere in the public domain where we can end love like grownups — less stridency and fewer lefts to the chin — a final half-turn of the old gem.
And she is right, of course, and smart to be. We don’t really share enough of the “big” interests. I am merely mad for her. And at best she is unclear about me, which leaves us where in six months time? I would never be enough for a Texas girl, anyway. Fascination has its virtuous limits. She needs attention to more than I could give mine to: to Walter Scott’s column, to being a New-Ager, to setting up a love nest, to a hundred things I really don’t care that much about but that grip her imagination. Consequently I’ll cut loose without complaining (though I’d be willing to spend one more happy night in Pheasant Meadow and then call it quits).
I punch the message button.
Beep. Frank, it’s Carter Knott.
I’m sneaking off to the Vet
tomorrow for the Cardinals
game. I guess I can’t get
enough of you guys. I’m
calling Walter too. It’s
Sunday morning. Call me at
home. Click.
Beep. Hey you ole rascal-thing.
I thought you were comin at
eleven-thirty. We’re all mad
at you down here so you better
not show your face. You know
who this is, dontcha? Click.
Beep. Frank, this is Walter
Luckett, Jr., speaking. It’s twelve
o’clock sharp here, Frank. I
was just throwing away some
old Newsweeks, and I found
this photograph of that DC-10
that went down a year or so
ago out in Chicago. O’Hare.
You might remember that,
Frank, you can see all those
people’s heads in the windows
looking out. It’s really
something. And I just can’t
help wondering what they
must’ve been thinking about,
since they are riding a bomb.
A big, silver bomb. That’s
about all I had in mind now.
Uhhmm. So long. Click.
Is this what he’d have told me if I’d been here to answer? What an Easter greeting! A chummy slice o’ life to pass along while you’re rigging your own blast-off into the next world. A while you were out from the grave! What else can happen?
I still cannot think a long thought about Walter. Though what I do think about is poor Ralph Bascombe, in his last hours on earth, only four blocks from here in Doctors Hospital and a lifetime away now. In his last days Ralph changed. Even in his features, he looked to me like a bird, a strangely straining gooney bird, and not like a nine-year-old boy sick to death and weary of unfinished life. Once he barked out loud at me like a dog, sharp and distinct, then he flopped up and down in his bed and laughed. Then his eyes shot open and burned at me, as if he knew me better than I knew myself and could see all my faults. I was in my chair beside his bed, holding his water cup and his terrible bendable straw. X was at the window, musing out at a sunny parking lot (and probably the cemetery). Ralph said loudly at me, “Oh, you son of a bitch, what are you doing holding that stupid glass? I could kill you for that.” And then he fell asleep again. And X and I just stared at each other and laughed. It’s true, we laughed and laughed until we cried with laughter. Not with fear or pain. What else was there to do, we must’ve said silently, and agreed that a good laugh was all right this time. No one would mind. It was at no one’s expense, and no one but the two of us would hear it — not even Ralph. It may seem callous, but we had that between ourselves, and who’s to be the judge when intimacy’s at work? It was one of our last moments of unalloyed tenderness in the world.