Finding Mrs. Ford

by Deborah Goodrich Royce

  Susan pushed up her sleeves, then tugged them down and glanced around again. She looked at her watch. She had told Sammy she would leave at two and it was now 2:20. Maybe he’d been there and had grown tired of waiting. Maybe he’d only been teasing when he’d made his flirtatious offer. He was gone, that much was certain.

  Susan began the deflated walk around the back of the building to where she’d left her car. The parking lot was dark, and the walk was long at this late and lonely hour. Rounding the corner of the building, Susan saw that the night cleaners had left the kitchen door ajar and the narrow slice of light that this provided relieved the jangly nerves that had overtaken her. People were just inside that door, so she wasn’t alone. She could hear their scratchy radio; they would be able to hear her.

  Without warning, two men stepped out from behind a car. Susan did a little hop in the air and a sound came out of her throat. She stumbled backward into the cinderblock wall of Frankie’s and clutched her bag like a paper shield to her chest.

  “Are you a nervous girl?” said the man who was closest to her, not more than an arm’s length away. This was the guy who sat with Vito Castiglione in the corner, the handsome one. “If you’re such a nervous girl, you probably shouldn’t creep up on people in the dark.”

  “I’m sorry, I…” Why was she apologizing? “I’m just heading to my car. Over there.” Why was she showing them her car? She wasn’t following any of the rules for a woman alone in a deserted parking lot. Not one single rule.

  The second man, the cop who sat at that same table, slipped something into the first one’s hands—an envelope?—and walked away quickly, around the corner of the disco.

  “You want me to walk you to your car?” The handsome one edged a little bit closer. What was his name? She knew it, but her brain right now was a blank.

  “No! I mean, I’m fine. It’s just over there. I have the light from the kitchen where all the men are cleaning. Right there!” Susan drew his attention to the kitchen door.

  “I’m not going to bite you. I see the men in the kitchen.” Now he was fully laughing at her. “I’m Johnny Buscemi. You know who I am, right?”

  “Yes, of course.” Who the hell was he? “I mean, I’ve seen you with Vito. At the corner table.”

  His melodious voice turned menacing. “Never mind where you see me or who you see me with.”

  “No! I don’t know who you’re with. I mean, I don’t know who that man was just now….”

  “Go. Go to your car.” Just like that, he dismissed her as he turned and walked off into the night.

  Shaking, Susan slumped against the wall. She saw her car, tantalizingly close, glowing in the beam of light from the open door, like a space ship in a 1950s movie. She hastened her step to get in it and get the hell out of there.

  She rummaged in the Bonwit Teller bag for the little clutch where she’d left her keys. Grabbing hold of them, her hands were trembling so badly that she dropped them onto the asphalt. Once again, good judgment had been ignored. She had not followed her mother’s cardinal rule to have her keys in hand before leaving a building. She hadn’t been sure if she was meant to go with Sammy in his car, or what exactly the plan had been, so now, here she was, on her hands and knees on the ground, groping for her keys.

  Susan heard footsteps and sensed a shadow fall over her, casting her deeper into darkness. She froze. Her breath grew shorter and shallower. Johnny Buscemi must have come back. His departure was a trick. She was hardly breathing at all, as if that could make her less noticeable. She mentally reviewed escape routes, while remaining stuck like a stone on all fours.

  Then, she heard a soft whistle, followed by, “Beauty!”

  Susan lifted her head to look up at Sammy and could barely get the words out. “What are you doing here?”

  “We have a date, remember?”

  “I thought you’d gone.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, ma belle. I drove my car over to Denny’s and have returned to accompany you there in yours. I couldn’t let a lady drive by herself at this late hour.”

  “Geez! You really scared me!”

  “You will, I hope, explain this word, ‘geez.’”

  “I’m serious!” Should she tell Sammy what just happened with Johnny Buscemi? What had just happened? “You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

  “My dear, please forgive me.” Sammy held out his hands to help her rise. “I should have seen that you were distracted. I was a little distracted, myself, by the sight of you. In your summer sweater and your summer tan, you look like you’ve spent a long day at the beach with a very good book.”

  That image made her smile. “Hardly the beach.”

  “Will you forgive me? Will you allow me to treat you to les crèpes magnifiques chez Denny?”

  “Well, if you put it that way…”

  “Shall I drive?”

  “Um…” Susan opened her hand with the keys. “All right.”

  Sammy took Susan gently by the elbow and led her around her car to the passenger door. He inserted the key in the lock, opened the door, and helped her inside. Then he strolled around the back, let himself in the driver’s side and started the engine.

  Susan couldn’t help noticing as they rounded the front of the building that Johnny Buscemi was still there, talking to the cop.

  They both looked up and silently watched her car pass.

  24

  “So, what exactly is a Chaldean?” Susan asked Sammy over pancakes and coffee, as she tried not to stare at his face. Denny’s fluorescents were bright as noontime and he was even more handsome in the light. “I’m kind of embarrassed that I don’t know. I’ve looked it up in our encyclopedia, but there’s nothing between Chain Stores and Chalk.”

  “What year is your encyclopedia from?” Sammy laughed.

  “Compton’s, 1949. I guess it belonged to my father. So, we’re kind of frozen in amber since we’ve never bought a new one.”

  “Chain stores are in the encyclopedia?”

  “I know! Isn’t that funny? It seems that George H. Hartford came up with a line of food stores back in 1858. That became A & P.”

  “I love that you read the encyclopedia.”

  Susan blushed at the compliment. She watched Sammy eating with gusto. The earnestness of it made him look younger and she wondered what he was like as a boy.

  “Did you know that chewing gum is mixed in a big vat?” She rambled on. “And bubble gum contains rubber latex?”

  Sammy laughed again and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “I’ve never been a fan of the stuff, but you may have put me off of it forever.”

  “Well, I thought I might be misspelling Chaldean, so I leafed around a bit. Americans spend about a third as much money for chewing gum as they do for books. At least, that was true in 1949.”

  “You are a font of thirty-year-old information. I think you’re ready for a TV game show.”

  “Yeah.” She reddened again. “I kind of get lost in there.”

  “Well, maybe you should look up Mesopotamia.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “It is. From a village in the north of Iraq. Tel Keppe. It means ‘hill of stones.’”

  “That sounds austere!” She laughed.

  “Well, maybe it looks better than it sounds.” He laughed too. God, he was beautiful when he laughed. “Anyway, it’s pretty small, but not far from a bigger city called Mosul. It’s another world from here.”

  “Is everyone there Chaldean?”

  “Definitely not. Iraq is a melting pot, just like the U.S. Our groups have been around a lot longer, but, as a country, we happen to be newer.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “Well, there was the Ottoman Empire, then the First World War, then the French and the English, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You get the picture.”

  “Always colonized?”

  “Actually, no! There once was a Chaldean Empire that ruled from 625 to 539 B.C. in the
same Mesopotamian region. Glory days. Nowadays, Chaldeans are Catholic. But most of our countrymen are Muslim.”

  “So, what are you doing here?”

  “This is the land of opportunity, or haven’t you heard that one?”

  “It rings a bell.”

  “In Detroit, Chaldeans run the grocery business.”

  “Like George H. Hartford!”

  “Not quite. Our stores tend to be small and family-run. Party stores, as you call them in Michigan. That’s really why I came—my parents were here. I was living in Paris when my father died, so I came to help my mother. Clan is important to Chaldeans.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father. My mother died too.”

  “An orphan recognizes his fellow.”

  “Is that a Chaldean saying?”

  Sammy laughed. “No, I just made it up. I’m sorry you lost your mother.”

  “Thanks, Sammy.” Susan took a sip of her coffee, which she cradled in both hands for warmth and to steady her fluttery fingers. “How does Detroit compare to your home?”

  “Well, we’ve traded the Tigris and Euphrates for the Detroit River, sand for snow, and kebabs for Coney Island hot dogs. The food at home is better. And, definitely the weather. But, in the end, I think that people are people.”

  “I think that too. It’s what I experienced in Paris.”

  “I knew you were a kindred spirit when I first saw you. But, when you said you’d lived in Paris, oh la la! I’d love to go back.”

  “Me too!”

  “I felt more like myself there—like I could be whoever I wanted to be, not who my family or anyone else expected me to be.”

  “You’re different, Sammy.”

  “Not really. I’m a dime a dozen. That’s how you say it, right?”

  “It is, but you’re not.”

  “Well. I’m not so sure.” Sammy grew silent. “Hey, guess what? We have a new president in Iraq. I’m pretty optimistic for the future. His name is Saddam Hussein and he’s part of the pan-Arab movement. Have you studied the Middle East at all?”

  “Not really. I guess I just don’t feel I’ve finished with European history yet.”

  “They’re pretty intertwined. You like movies, right? Watch Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “I’ve been meaning to. I love Dr. Zhivago, though. I mean, in terms of David Lean.”

  “You’re a romantic.”

  Susan blushed again, all the way up to her hairline. “I guess I am.”

  Sammy rescued her by changing the subject. “Anyway, our new deputy prime minister is a fellow Chaldean. Tariq Aziz. My family knows his family. That’s the deal with pan-Arabism. A larger Arab identity that’s not so factionalized. I hope it happens.”

  “I do too, Sammy,” Susan said, without fully knowing what she meant.

  “Who knows? Maybe all the Detroit Chaldeans will go back to become Iraqi Chaldeans again.”

  “Do you think you’ll go?” She hoped he wouldn’t.

  “I don’t think I’m going anywhere. But I think you are.”

  “Well. I hope to.”

  “So, then what are you doing here?”

  “My father’s sick.”

  “No, I mean at this disco. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

  “That’s the title of a Martin Scorsese short film.”

  “See what I mean? You really don’t belong here. I mean it, why Frankie’s?”

  “I needed to work. I got a job at a boutique and met Annie, and—I don’t know. One thing led to another and I followed her here.”

  “You don’t seem like the following type.”

  “You don’t really know me.”

  “Perhaps not. But, I’ve met college girls from Warren who are off working in Chicago or New York. You should be one of them.”

  “I just wanted to be home this summer. I don’t know how much longer my father has.”

  “That, I understand.”

  “I probably shouldn’t even go back to school, but my father made me promise. Normal wish from a normal father. But in our circumstances, it’s hard to leave him.”

  “You sound like a good daughter.”

  “Well.” Susan looked up at him. “You sound like a pretty good son.”

  “So, that’s us. The dutiful children.”

  “God, Sammy. I hope we’re more than that!” Susan said and took a bite of her now-cold pancakes.

  * * *

  Afterwards, Sammy gently held her arm again as he walked her back to her car. He helped her into the driver’s seat, bent down, with a lock of his dark hair falling down over his dark eyes and kissed her. Not a sexy kiss, but a gentle variety sweet kiss that made her cry. Right there, in her car, in the parking lot of Denny’s, as she looked out at a gas station and a blinking traffic light that had switched into its off hours’ mode, tears ran down her face.

  Sammy took both of his surprisingly soft hands and wiped her cheeks, from nose to ears, like a child. He smiled broadly, and his beautiful white teeth gleamed at her in the dark. The only thing that Susan could think to say was, “Grandmother! What big teeth you have!” And how Sammy knew this fairy tale, she couldn’t rightly say, but nevertheless he responded, “The better to eat you with, my dear.”

  They both laughed that they had originated in such different parts of the world but knew the same stories. And Susan drove off into the night feeling that she had been seen for the first time. Truly seen. Not just as a pretty girl or a smart girl or a nice girl, but in her entirety, for all that she was and all that she could be.

  It didn’t even matter that a gun had peeked out from Sammy’s waistband when he leaned in to kiss her. Perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps the gun had made the moment feel more real to Susan than anything had in her life, thus far.

  25

  Tuesday, August 12, 2014

  Watch Hill

  Susan sits in the dark again, this time in her living room in Watch Hill. Different room. Different chair. Same mental state. She watches the lighthouse turn, focusing her attention on the rhythmic regularity of its revolutions. She is using it as a metronome to calm her mind, to quell her fears.

  It is not working.

  Five days have passed since the highway of life has taken a novel turn. Susan, who had already traversed a few forks along that road, recognizes that she had grown complacent. The wariness with which she once had armed herself had lost its edge. She’d been asleep at the wheel, had not seen the other vehicle bearing down on her. That the vehicle had arrived in the form of a Ford Crown Victoria would have, at any other time, struck Susan as ironic.

  She misses Jack. Her Jack. She had rested under his protective shield for so many years, even beyond his death, that she came to trust it to be there. She is afraid to think that it may have deserted her, that shield. She is afraid of everything right now.

  She harnesses her mind toward her husband.

  Brilliant. Visionary. Insightful. Generous. Funny. Kind. How many adjectives would Susan need to describe Jack Ford? How many adjectives have you got? She had met him when she’d given up hope of ever meeting anyone, just like the clichés say. She had been in New York for sixteen years. She had made her life alone. She’d had friends, Jack Jr., for one, but she existed apart.

  Jack was different from any man she’d known. The common wisdom was that women were the multi-taskers—through millennia of human evolution that fitted each sex for its role in the survival of the species, women had evolved to notice disparate sensory inputs and keep them properly sorted.

  Men, on the other hand, were like horses wearing blinders. They charged forward, looking neither right nor left, into battle. This was their evolutionary adaptation and it, too, assured the continuation of the human race. Two sides of the coin, they complemented each other and created a functioning whole.

  So the wisdom went.

  Uniquely, Jack checked all of the boxes above. And, like so many others who had come under his influence, it would be impos
sible to quantify what Susan had learned from him. Much of her world-view had been formed at Jack’s side, watching and emulating him.

  Susan’s husband had died five years ago of a massive heart attack. It was really the only way for a man like Jack to go. No lingering illness would have been tolerable to him, though Susan knew diseases weren’t distributed based on a person’s ability to withstand them. One fell swoop, one day in April, at the office, doing what he loved, and it was over. No defibrillator, no resuscitation. All in all, it was a good death for a man such as Jack. Charmed, just like his life. Susan and Jack Jr. were left to fend for themselves. Together, they ran the company. And, together, they were just about able to perform half as well as Jack Sr. had done, alone.

  Susan stares at the water: at the alternating red and white glow from the lighthouse sweeping in a methodical loop, highlighting whitecaps and waves. She remembers the first time Jack took her out there at night.

  Jack’s captain had been at the helm. Venus was the name of his boat and she was as beautiful as that name would imply. Built in 1937 as a commuter yacht for a famous financier, Jack and his captain, Eric, had lovingly restored her to perfection.

  They had gone out that night, cloudy as it was, because Jack said he had a surprise for her. They motored slowly through the long channel that leads out of the harbor of Watch Hill. Jack asked her to sit at the bow, on the recessed open deck seats at front.

  The clouds dropped lower and morphed into fog. Thank God for sonar. The air was chilly and wet, but Jack had tucked them both in with blankets. Maybe it was raining or maybe it was the effect of moving through clouds. Like a carnival boat that floats on a track through a cardboard sky. A champagne bucket lay at their feet. Jack popped the cork and poured for them both.

  He recounted some history of the illustrious Venus. “Shirley Temple celebrated her twelfth birthday aboard this boat. During World War II, she was commandeered by the coast guard, painted grey, and used to ferry FDR up and down the Hudson, to and from Hyde Park. After the war, the man who built her kept her for a while but eventually lost interest. She was down in Stuart, Florida when I bought her. The worms were this long.”