Let Me Be Frank With You

by Richard Ford

  “I just shake my head, Frank,” Arnie said to me, when we were getting the house sold back in ’04. “My ole man’d drown each and every one of these cocksuckers like palsied puppies. But I like ’em. They’re my bread-and-butter. The moment they’re gone—and they will be, take my word for it—I’ll be right up there in Hopatcong with fish gunk on my hands, delivering lobsters to a whole new limo-full of boy geniuses.”

  Arnie knew something about the future. How much he knew might’ve been worth something to somebody paying attention to our economy back in ’08.

  What’s since then happened to Arnie appearance-wise, however, is not much short of alarming. His big face, once scuffed and divoted by a boyhood on the briny, now looks lacquered, as though he’d gone to the islands and picked up some new facial features. There’s also something strange about his hair. Arnie, like Corporal Alyss, was never a good-looking brute. And even with whatever strange resurfacings and repointings he’s gone in for, he’s no more handsome than he was, nor any younger-looking—which must’ve been the goal. He has the same snarly mouth, the same pugnacious chin, the same brick-bat forehead and too-narrow eyes and meaty ears. I’d assumed the new brown face in the Christmas photo had been a son’s young wife. But possibly she’d belonged to Arnie, who by then had made some dough and traded up from his original wife—first, for a winsome Shu-Kai, then later on for a busty Svetlana. Along the way he’d felt the need to make the old outer-Arnie keep pace with the spirited, energetic, seemingly ageless inner-essence Arnie. Whatever. His need dictated a Biden-esque transplant to replace his old Johnny-U flattop—a follicle forest that’s now grown in but will never look natural. Likewise, the center crevice between Arnie’s thick eyebrows has been paved over—the part he formerly utilized to register stare-you-down take-it-or-leave-it’s to the high dockside price of halibut and Alaskan crab claws. Plus, the old gulley-gulley of his previously pocked neck now looks the smoothed way it did in his ’68 Wolverine team picture, when he was known as “Gumper Two” and had the habit of roaring out from between the pipes and kicking your ass if he thought you needed it.

  I just have to trust that the old Arnie’s in there somewhere. Though, in truth, his re-purposed “look” has left him looking compromised and a little silly and (worst of all) slightly feminized—which couldn’t have been what the doctor promised. These decisions are never a good idea.

  ARNIE’S WALKED ON AWAY FROM ME AND COME TO stand in front (though also possibly to the side) of our ruined house. He’s looking up into what’s been skinned open by the wind and water—stark rooms with furniture, plumbing, appliances, ceiling fixtures, white electric harness-work sprung and dangling, giving the shambles a strangely hopeful stage-set look of unfinality, as if something might still be done. It can’t. The Democrat-donkey weathervane I nailed to the roof ridge back in ’99 at great risk to myself has been bent and busted and left hanging—unrecognizable, if I didn’t know what it was and signified. Opposition to “W” Bush.

  Arnie’s wearing a sharp, brown-leather, thigh-length car coat, high-gloss, low-slung Italian loafers, a pair of cuff-less tweed trousers that probably cost a thousand bucks at Paul Stuart, and a deep-maroon cashmere turtleneck that altogether make him look like a mafia don instead of a high-priced fishmonger.

  I’ve struggled out of my car, tossed my gum, and am instantly cold—my ribs especially—as if I wasn’t wearing a shirt under my jacket. The leavening effects of the Gulf Stream are, of course, bullshit. I’m only wearing an old Bean’s Newburyport, chinos and deck shoes—at-home attire for the suburban retiree-not-yet-come-fully-to-grips-with-reality. I’m also concerned about stepping on a nail, myself. And because of something Sally said, I feel a need to more consciously pick my feet up when I walk—“the gramps shuffle” being the unmaskable, final-journey approach signal. It’ll also keep me from falling down and busting my ass.

  What is it about falling? “He died of a fall.” “The poor thing never recovered after his fall.” “He broke his hip in a fall and was never the same.” “Death came relatively quickly after a fall in the back yard.” How fucking far do these people fall? Off of buildings? Over spuming cataracts? Down manholes? Is it farther to the ground than it used to be? In years gone by I’d fall on the ice, hop back up, and never think a thought. Now it’s a death sentence. What Sally said to me was “Be careful when you go down those front steps, sweetheart. The surface isn’t regular, so pick your feet up.” Why am I now a walking accident waiting to happen? Why am I more worried about that than whether there’s an afterlife?

  Fog has pushed in onto the high-tide beach. My cheeks and hands are stinging with damp. The air’s hovering at the dew point, ready to turn to water and freeze when the temperature dives. Somewhere nearby a vicious saw whine goes silent. A truck door slams, its engine starts, then revs, then shuts down. The Mexican house gutters, invisible beyond the berm, have knocked off for an early almuerzo. Quiet and wondrous seaside beauty has descended. The ocean’s hiss and foghorn are all that’s audible.

  And like a pilgrim at Agra, I’m struck by my former house’s solid stationary-ness, a wreck held in place only by its great weight. It has taken up a persuasive residence on the berm, with its former neighbor houses all gone. It is solemn, still, and slightly mournful teetering so, as if it was aware of its uninhabitability, but determined to re-find dignity in size. I look to my toes to determine if I’ve got good footing. Something catches my eye, sand crusting over my shoe tops. A bright blue condom lies in front of my toe—out of its wrapper, elongated and spent, its youthful users now far away. I could see it as a gag gift from Poseidon. Though I prefer to see it as a sign that humans are drifting back to this spot already—now that it’s vacant—and utilizing the beach as they have and should. Possibly sooner than anyone’s predicting, complex life will resume here, and time will march on.

  “So. The guy says to me. This putz speculator,” Arnie says. We’re at a distance from each other. Forces of officialdom have spray-painted a red circle on the broke-open side wall of the house, then divided it into pie-shaped thirds, and inscribed mysterious numbers and letters—code for the structure’s present state of body and future. Total loss being the gist of it. Arnie’s carrying on talking. It could be to anyone—if anyone else was here. I notice he’s lost his old nyak-nyak Maine accent. “. . . he says, this speculator, ‘We’ll buy your lot, pay to have the derelict hauled off. Write you a check on the spot. ’Cause you’re gonna be payin’ taxes on the fucker, house or no house. Insurance won’t pay. Rates’ll be sky high if you do rebuild—assuming anybody’ll insure you at all. And once the new flood map’s issued by fuckin’ Obama’s lackeys, you’ll be sitting on unbuildable ground. If it’s not already flooded again. Plus the goddamn thing’ll have to be up on fucking stilts. Who wants that kind of African rig-up? Beachfront. BFD.’” Arnie shakes his head, staring up at the vacant husk. He sniffs, clears his throat, coughs in the new, approved CDC way—into his elbow. No doubt his new wife has schooled him in this. He would never do it otherwise. “So what’s your view, Frank? A disinterested observer? What would you do? I said ix-nay to three million exactly one year ago. And that was a shit market. I’m fucked, is how you spell it.”

  “What’s the guy offering?” Arnie’s a few feet up the berm. I’m not sure I’m being heard.

  “Five and change. I told you,” Arnie says bitterly. “I was leavin’ the place to the kids. My daughter’s a diplomat in India. Got her own car and a fuckin’ armed driver.”

  “Do you need the money?” I’ve come to within a few feet of him, but I’m still talking up.

  The cotton-y whiteness of the fog has made a cloud of vitreous swimmers swarm my vision, slightly disorienting me. Tiny tadpoles of blood cells, like space junk, shift and subside in my vision—the result of an old Marine Corps cudgel-stick blow to the eye that sent me reeling. They’re harmless and would be pretty if they didn’t feel like vertigo.

  Arnie obviously believes that the money questi
on doesn’t require an answer, because he’s stuck his hands in his pockets and extended his big chin like Mussolini.

  “Was the place paid off, Arnie?” As I said, I haven’t consulted my records. I believe cash was exchanged—though a second mortgage is possible.

  “Nah,” Arnie says. “F-N-C. I paid you cash. You’re slippin’, Frank.” He swivels around and looks at me dismissively, a few paces back down the berm from him. There’s, of course, a standard calculator for “calamity expense”: take the rebuild off the value of the house the day before disaster struck (October 28th); add twenty-five K as an inconvenience surcharge, then don’t sell the sucker for a farthing less. That, of course, may not work if you can’t be certain the ground will be ground and not seawater in ten years. Normally I counsel patience in most things. Patience, though, is a pre-lapsarian concept in a post-lapsarian world.

  “If one of these speculators suffered what I’ve suffered here, you know what would happen to him?” Arnie’s turned and started back down the berm, his loafers taking on sand. He’s stared at his ruin for long enough. He doesn’t really want my advice.

  “He’d get richer, Arn,” I say.

  “So fuck it,” Arnie says. “F-U-C-K.” Like most conversations between consenting adults, nothing crucial’s been exchanged. Arnie just needed someone to show his mangled house to. And there’s no reason that someone shouldn’t be me. It’s a not-unheard-of human impulse.

  Arnie walks right past me in the direction of my car. “You’re well out of it, Frank,” he says. Close up, I can see better the elements of his new feminized visage. Possibly he forgets how he looks, then remembers and feels skittish and starts looking for an exit. He realizes everyone’s seeing the new Arnie, the same way he does in the mirror every morning, and that it’s weird as hell. The smoothed-out, previously raveled Gumper forehead, the stupid tree-line hair implantation, the re-paved cheeks and un-ruckled neck. I don’t look in mirrors anymore. It’s cheaper than surgery.

  “Here’s what I’d do, Arnie,” I say to Arnie’s back, heading down the berm. “Sell the son of a bitch and let somebody else worry about it. It’s OPM. Other people’s money.” I don’t know why, but I’m now talking like a Jersey tough guy.

  Arnie’s not hearing me. He’s already down by my car in the shifting fog. It’s gotten colder than I want to expose myself to in just my light jacket. My toes are stinging up through my shoe soles.

  Arnie stops by my blue car, turns to look at me, where I’m still halfway up the sandy-weedy extrusion, the house shambles behind me. The foghorn emits its baleful call from nowhere. The striper fisherman’s long gone. Likewise the Glucks (we always called them the “Clucks”). It’s just us. Two men alone, not gay, on an indeterminate mission of consoling and being consoled, which has suddenly revealed itself to be pointless.

  Which means trouble could be brewing. Arnie’s a man who answers his phone by just saying his name—as though to say, “Yeah? What? Speak your piece or get lost.” These men have hair-trigger tempers and can’t be trusted to do the right thing. How many women answer their phones by saying their names? So much for “I’m here.”

  “What’s this, a fucking Honda? An itchy pussy?” Arnie leans against my car door, as if he’s amused by its sky-blue paint job and plastic fenders.

  “Hyundai,” I say uncomfortably, but take a wrong step on the sandy incline, my toes prickly-numb, my socks damp with sand, my hands clammy. I pitch then half over onto my side, though not all the way onto my face. Not a true fall. “Shit. This fucking sand.” I’m balanced like Arnie’s house—half on my ass, half on my hand—trying to get my feet under me so I can get off this goddamn sand pillar. I’m afraid of wrenching my neck. Possibly I should roll the rest of the way down.

  Arnie’s taken no notice. “A hybrid, I suppose.” He’s still appraising my car. “Like you, Frank.” He’s all of a sudden supremely satisfied—with something. Dismay and house grief have vanished in the fog. I’m getting myself back on my feet. But has something happened? Is it what I feared—Arnie’s turning on me? Possibly he’s packing a PPK and will simply shoot me for once selling him a house that’s now worth chicken feed. I’ve let myself in for this. Men are a strange breed.

  “A hybrid of what, Arnie,” I say with difficulty. “What am I a hybrid of?”

  “I’m yanking your schwantz, Frank. You look a little peakèd. You takin’ care of yourself?” I’m down off this berm now, my shoes full of cold sand, my ass damp. Arnie, for his part, looks robust, which was what his cosmetic work was in behalf of. He looks to have swelled out his chest a few centimeters and deepened his voice. I don’t like being said to be peakèd. “You oughta do yoga, Frank.”

  I’m back on his level, though unsteady. “I let the machine maintain itself, Arnie.”

  “Okay,” Arnie says. “Probably smart.” He’s possibly thinking about his cosmetic work in contrast to peakèd me. New grille. New bumpers. In my view, though, Arnie looks like somebody who used to be Arnie Urquhart. Age and change have left him squirrelly, and unpredictable—to himself. This is what I witness.

  I come to stand beside my Sonata’s front headlamp. I’m Christmas cold. Arnie’s blocking my path back inside now—unless I want to go around and crawl in the passenger door. I’d like to get in and crank up the heat. But I don’t want to seem to want to leave. Arnie—wax-works weirdness and all—is still a man who’s lost his house, endured an insult I haven’t. He’s deserving of a little slack being cut. Our sympathies are most required when they seem least due.

  Fog’s retreated toward the water’s edge, as if the tide change has created a vacuum. A tangy fish stink is all around. I look up through the blue-white mist and can see another Air-Tran jet spiriting upward. I’ve heard it but haven’t registered.

  “I need to act quick, I guess,” Arnie says, back to his house and the charade that I’m here for real reasons. “That’s the way, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes,” I say, finding the warm hood surface with my hand.

  “Fish business is the same. ‘Let it sit, you might as well quit. Then you’re in the shit.’”

  I smile, as if that idea sized up all of life. “It’s better than ‘hurry up and wait.’”

  “That’s the old man’s mantra.” Arnie sniffs, looks down at his own spoiled shoes.

  At this small distance of five feet, not looking at him, but letting my eyes roam anywhere but into contact with his, Arnie (in my fervid mind) has magically become not himself, but another boy I also went to Michigan with—Tapper Spitz. I used to bump into Tap in the strangest of places over the years. The Mayo Clinic urology waiting room. The Philadelphia airport cell-phone lot. On the sidewalk outside the My Office bar on Twenty-First and Madison. Tap was likewise a Wolverine puckster. He and Arnie probably knew each other. What did the poet tell us? “All memory resolves itself in gaze.” It’s much easier at this stressed, empty moment to imagine I’m out here with ole Tapper than that I’m out here with ole Arn. I happen to know Tapman L. Spitz died doing the thing he loved best—para-skiing down the Eiger on his sixty-fifth birthday. RIP ole Tapper.

  “My wife doesn’t like it down here.” Arnie/Tapper snuffles his big, as-yet-unaltered schnoz, then folds his thick arms—not easy in his severely tailored mafia coat. He’s staring again up at his house, as if it was where it belonged. I’m supposed to know he means his new wife, not the nice, plump-pastie Ishpeming girl I met at the closing, who seemed pleased with life. He shakes his head. “She won’t even come down here.”

  “A reason to cut it loose,” I say. Tapper’s already sadly fading back where he came from. His service rendered.

  “Oh yeah.” Arnie’s voice is lonely. He’s still leaning on my car door, blocking me. A gull has spied us and begun a savage, rhythmical screeching. Get off the beach, you assholes! It’s ours! We want it back. You did your worst. BEAT IT! “What’s the most mysterious thing you know, Frank?” Arnie says, and looks speculative, his lacquered cheeks fattened. He’s ready
for our conversation to be over, he just doesn’t know how to end it—his brain speeding ahead to thoughts of growing his fish business, luring his diplomat daughter home to run things, getting his young wife to take more interest in his interests, having things work out better than his makeover makes him feel. His wrecked house, I’m certain, will be gone by New Year’s.

  “I don’t know, Arnie. What universe is our universe inside of? Why do so many people have pancreatic cancer all of a sudden? How does a thermos work? I could come up with several.”

  Arnie unfolds his crossed arms, pushes his palms back through his hair, both sides, Biden-like, clears his throat, then steps away from my car as if he’s realized he was keeping me out of it (my chance now to get out of the chill). Arnie has creases deep as the Clipperton Trench in both his big earlobes. Possibly he feels dark intimations, but wouldn’t recognize them.