by Richard Ford
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I will.’
I heard him laugh, then there was a click on the line, and I could hear my father say, ‘Hello? Hello? Joe, where are you? Oh shoot, now.’
‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I’m still here.’ But he couldn’t hear me. Something, I thought, might’ve burned through the line. And when I had listened a moment more to his voice, I said, ‘Good-bye. Yes. Good-bye,’ and said his name. And then I hung up the phone and went to dress myself for school.
That day at my school was an odd day. I remember it very clearly because I arrived late and did not have an excuse from my mother and felt tired and half in a dream, as if I hadn’t slept at all or was on my way to being sick. I missed a test in my English class because I hadn’t done homework from the night before. And in my civics class someone brought that day’s copy of the Tribune and read a story aloud from it, which said there was moisture in the air now, and soon it would both rain and snow, and the fire in Allen Creek would go out. After that we had a debate on whether the fire would actually go out–some said it would burn all winter–and if man would cause it or nature would. My teacher, who was a tall half-Indian man, asked us if any of our fathers were fighting the fire, and several people put up their hands. But I didn’t because I didn’t want it known and because it didn’t seem like a normal matter in my life then.
Sitting in my geometry class later, waiting for school to end, it seemed like a cold afternoon out of doors. I tried to think of what was between my mother and Warren Miller now, because something seemed to be. And not because of what they’d said to each other when I was present or said to me or might’ve said that I knew nothing about, but because of what they didn’t say but just presumed, the way you presumed moisture was in the air or that there were no more degrees in a circle than three hundred and sixty.
Though whatever it was, it had been worth a lie. My mother had lied to my father, and I had too. Maybe Warren Miller had lied to someone. And while I knew very well what a lie was, I didn’t know what difference it made when adults did it. Possibly it mattered less for them inasmuch as in their lives, what was and wasn’t so would finally be plain for everyone to see. Whereas for me, because I had done nothing in the world to represent me, it mattered more. And as I sat at my desk in the cool October afternoon, I tried to think of a happy life for myself and a happy and gay life for my parents when all this would be over, as my mother said everything would be. But all I could think of as I sat there was my father saying, ‘Hello? Hello? Joe, where are you?’ And of myself saying, ‘Good-bye.’
When school was over I walked to my job at the photographer’s studio, and then I walked home. The weather was changing and there was a breeze blowing, the kind of windy breeze that eventually turns icy in Montana and blows through your skin as if you were made of paper. I knew the same wind would be blowing that day where the fire was burning, and that it would have consequences there. And I wondered if it might snow in the mountains and thought that it would, and that with luck my father would come home sooner than anyone thought.
When I got in our house my mother was standing at the sink in the kitchen. She was looking out toward where the sun was setting. She had on a blue and white dress that looked like a navy dress. Her hair was tied up in back in what she called a French bun. It was a way she fixed herself that I liked. She had been looking at the newspaper, which was open on the countertop.
‘Winter, winter, go away,’ she said, staring out the window. She looked around at me and smiled. ‘You’re not dressed warmly enough. Next you’ll be sick. Then I’ll be sick.’ She looked back outside. ‘Did you have a very enjoyable day today at school?’
‘Not a very good one,’ I said. ‘I missed a test. I forgot.’
‘Well. Do better there, then,’ she said. ‘Harvard only has a few places available for boys from the ends of the earth. Somebody else from Great Falls probably expects to go to Harvard, too. And they won’t want to take both of you. I certainly wouldn’t.’
‘Where did you go so early?’ I said. ‘I was awake.’
‘Were you really?’ my mother said. ‘I could’ve driven you to school.’ She moved away from the window and began refolding the newspaper page by page. ‘Oh, I went outwards,’ she said. ‘I saw in this paper this morning a notice for a job teaching math to boys at the air base. Some of them can’t add out there, I guess. So I filled out an application to be industrious. I have an urge to do good all of a sudden.’ She finished folding the paper and pushed it neatly to the side and turned around toward me. I wanted to ask her about going to work for Warren Miller.
‘Dad called this morning,’ I said. ‘I talked to him.’
‘Where was he?’ my mother said. She did not look surprised, only interested.
‘I don’t know. I thought he was at the fire. He didn’t say where he was.’
‘Where did you say I was?’
‘I said you were gone to town. I thought that was right.’ I did not want to tell her he had asked if she was stepping out on him. I knew she wouldn’t like that.
‘You thought I was gone to work for Mr Miller. Is that right?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well, I was. Or I did. I went there and did a few things. It’s just part-time. I still have a son to raise at home, I think.’
‘That’s okay,’ I said. I was glad to hear her say that even if she was only making a joke. ‘Is Miller married?’ I said. And these were words that just said themselves. I hadn’t planned to say them.
‘I already talked about that,’ my mother said. ‘He was.’ She walked to the refrigerator and took out an ice tray and carried that to the sink and ran water over it. ‘He lived in that house with his mother and his little wife. The three of them. For quite some time, I guess. Then the old lady died–his mother. And not long after that his wife, whose name was Marie LaRose or some such thing, ran off somewhere. To California or Colorado–one of those–with an oil wildcatter. Forty-six years old, and off she goes.’
My mother took a white coffee cup out of the cabinet, put one ice cube in it, then took a full bottle of Old Crow whiskey from under the sink, uncapped it, and poured some into the cup. She was talking while she did this and not looking at me. I wondered if she would tell this all to my father if he asked her, and I decided she probably wouldn’t.
‘Do you feel sorry for him,’ I asked.
‘For Warren Miller?’ my mother said, and she looked at me quickly, then back at her cup on the sink top where she was stirring the ice cube with her finger. ‘Indeed-ee-not. I don’t feel sorry for anybody. I don’t feel sorry for myself, so I don’t see why I should feel sorry for these other people. In particular those I don’t know very well.’ She looked at me again, quickly, then lifted the cup up and leaned forward to take a sip. ‘I made this too full,’ she said before she tasted the whiskey, then she drank some.
‘Dad said they can’t control the fire out there now,’ I said. ‘He said they just watch it.’
‘Well, then, he’s perfect for that. He likes golf.’ She held the cup under the faucet and let water trickle into it. ‘Your father has very pretty hands, have you ever noticed them? They’re like a girl’s. He’ll ruin them fighting forest fires. My father’s hands were like big lug nuts. That’s what he used to say.’
‘He said he hoped you weren’t still mad at him,’ I said.
‘He’s a sweet man,’ my mother said. ‘I’m not mad at him. Did you two have a nice chat about me? All my character flaws on parade? Did he talk about his Indian woman he has out there?’ She carried the ice tray back to the refrigerator. It was almost dark outside, and I snapped the light on in the kitchen. It was a dim light and only made the room seem small and dirty.
‘Turn that off,’ my mother said. She was annoyed at me for having talked about her, which I hadn’t done. She took her cup of whiskey and sat down at the kitchen table. ‘I went out and looked at an apartment today. I looked at those Helen Apartments over on Second. They ha
ve a two-bedroom that’s nice. It’s near the river and it’s close to your school, too.’
‘Why are we going to do that?’ I said.
‘Because,’ my mother said. She put her ring finger through the little cup handle and looked at the cup on the table. She spoke very clearly, and in my memory very slowly. ‘This fire could go on for a long time. Your father may want a new life. I don’t know. I have to be smart about things. I have to think about who pays bills. I have to think about the rent here. Things are different now in case you haven’t noticed. You can get drawn in over your head if you don’t look out. You can lose your peace of mind.’
‘I don’t think that’s true,’ I said, because I thought my father was gone working to put out a fire, and would soon be back. My mother was going too far. She was saying the wrong words and did not even believe them herself.
‘I don’t mind saying that,’ my mother said. ‘He’s not lacking. I told you that before.’ She kept her finger through the cup handle, but did not lift it. She looked tense and tired and unhappy sitting there, trapped in the way she saw the world and her life–a bad way. ‘Maybe we just shouldn’t have moved up here,’ she said. ‘Maybe we should’ve stayed in Lewiston. You can make so many adjustments you don’t know what’s what anymore.’ She wasn’t happy to be saying these words because she did not like to rearrange things, even in her thoughts. And as far as I knew, she hadn’t had to do that in her life. She raised the cup and took a drink of the whiskey. ‘I suppose you think I’m the horrible one now, don’t you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’
‘Well, that’s right,’ my mother said, ‘I’m not. It’d be nice if somebody was in the wrong for a change. It’d make everybody feel better.’
‘I wouldn’t feel better,’ I said.
‘Okay. Then not you,’ my mother said, and nodded. ‘Joe chooses for his only choice in the world to do the absolutely correct best thing. Good luck to him.’ She looked around at me and the expression on her face was an expression of dislike, one I hadn’t seen before but knew right away. Later I would see it turned toward other people. But the first time was looking at me and was because she believed she’d done all she could that was correct and the best thing, and it had only gotten her left with me. And I couldn’t do anything that mattered. Though if I could I would’ve had my father be there, or Warren Miller, or somebody who had the right words that would take the place of hers, anybody she could speak to without just hearing her own voice in a room and having to go to the trouble of pretending she did not feel absolutely alone.
At seven o’clock that night my mother and I drove across the river to Warren Miller’s house to eat dinner with him. My mother wore a bright green dress and high heels that were the same color, and she had taken her hair down out of the French bun and put on perfume.
‘This is my desperation dress,’ she said to me when I was waiting for her in the living room, and where I could see her through the bathroom door in front of the mirror. ‘Your father should see me wearing this,’ she said, brushing her hair back with her fingers. ‘He’d approve of it. Inasmuch as he paid for it.’
‘He’d like it,’ I said.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I’m sure he would too.’ She drank the last of her cup of whiskey and left it in the sink as we went out the back door.
In the car she was in a good humor, and I was, too, because of it. We drove through the middle of Great Falls, past the Masonic Temple where no lights were on, and past the Pheasant Lounge across Central, where the neon sign hung out dimly in the night. It was cold now, and my mother had not worn a coat and was cold herself, though she said she wanted to feel the air to get her bearings.
She drove us down to Gibson Park and along the river so that we passed the Helen Apartments, which was a long four-story redbrick building I had never seen before but where several windows were lighted and in one or two I could see someone sitting by a lamp reading a newspaper.
‘How do you feel,’ my mother asked, looking over at me. ‘Out of reach? I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I feel fine.’ I was looking out at the Helen Apartments as we drove past them. They did not seem like bad places to me. Maybe our life would be better there.
‘Sometimes’–my mother straightened her bare arms toward the steering wheel and looked ahead toward Black Eagle, across the river–‘if you can just get a little distance on your fate, things seem okay. I like that. It’s a relief to me.’
‘I know it,’ I said, because I felt relieved just at that moment.
‘Keep your distance,’ she said. ‘Then everybody–girls included–will think you’re smart. And maybe you will be.’ She reached down to turn on the radio. ‘Let’s have some mood music,’ she said. I remember very distinctly there was a man’s voice speaking in a foreign language, which I guessed was French. He was speaking very fast, and seemed very far away. ‘Canada,’ my mother said. ‘We live near Canada now. My God.’ She clicked the radio off. ‘I can’t stand Canada tonight,’ she said. ‘Sorry. We’ll have Canada later.’ And we turned and drove on across the Fifteenth Street Bridge and up into Black Eagle.
Warren Miller’s house was the only one on his street with a porch light shining. And once we had stopped across the street from it, I could see that all the lights inside were burning, and the house–set up above the street–looked warm inside like a place where a party was going on or was ready to begin. Warren Miller’s pink Oldsmobile was parked halfway up the driveway, and farther down the street I could see the blue light of the Italian steakhouse. In front of Warren’s car, in the shadows beside the house, I saw there was a motorboat on a trailer, the smooth white hull pointed up.
‘It’s all lit up in there, isn’t it?’ my mother said. She seemed pleased by the lights. She turned the rearview mirror toward her and opened her eyes very wide, closed them and opened them again as if she’d been asleep. I wondered what she would say if I told her I didn’t want to go in Warren Miller’s house, and that I wanted to walk back home over the bridge. I thought she would make me go anyway, and this was something I had no choice in. ‘Well,’ she said, turning the mirror back in the dark. ‘Handsome is as handsome looks, too. Are you going inside with me? You don’t have to. You can go home.’
‘No.’ And I was surprised by that. ‘I’m hungry,’ I said.
‘Great,’ my mother said. She opened the car door onto the cold night’s air, and together we got out to go inside the house.
Warren Miller opened the front door before we were all the way up the front steps. He had a white dish towel tucked inside his belt front like an apron. He was wearing a white shirt, suit pants and cowboy boots, and he was smiling, not so much in a happy way as in a serious one. He seemed older to me and bigger than he had the day before, and his limp seemed worse. His eyeglasses were shining and his thin black hair was slicked back and gleaming. He was not handsome at all, and did not look like a man who read poetry or played golf or who had a lot of money or holdings. But I knew those things were all true.
‘You look like a beauty pageant queen, Jeanette,’ he said to my mother on the steps. He talked loudly, much louder than he had the day before. He was framed in the lighted doorway, and inside the house on a table by the door, I could see a glass he had been drinking out of.
‘I was–on one occasion,’ my mother answered. And she walked right by him through the door. ‘Where’s the heater in here? I’m frozen,’ I heard her say, then she disappeared inside.
‘You have to say the nice things to women,’ Warren Miller said to me, and he put his large hand on my shoulder again. We were in the doorway, and I could smell whatever he was drinking on his breath. ‘Do you always say them to your mother?’
‘Yes sir,’ I said. ‘I try to.’
‘Are you looking after her welfare?’ I could hear him breathe down in his chest. His eyes were watery blue behind his glasses.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do that.’
; ‘You can’t trust anybody.’ He gripped my shoulder hard. ‘You can’t even trust yourself. You’re no damn good, are you? I can tell. I’m part Indian.’ He laughed when he said that.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I guess I’m not.’ And I laughed, too. Then, holding my shoulder, he pushed me through the door and into the house.
Inside, the air was very warm and thick with cooking smells. Every light I could see was turned on, and the doors to all the rooms were open so that from the middle of the living room you could see into two bedrooms where there were double beds and, farther on, into a bathroom that had white tiles. Everything in the house was neat and clean, and everything seemed old-fashioned to me. The wallpaper had pale orange flowers in it. All the tables had white lace doilies under the lamps, and the pictures were all framed in heavy, dark-looking wood. It was nice furniture–I knew that–but it was old and curved, with fat legs. It seemed unusual for a man to live here. It was nothing like we had. Our furniture was not all the same. And the walls in our house were painted and did not have wallpaper.
Warren Miller limped through the living room back into the kitchen where he was cooking, but right away brought my mother a big drink of what he was drinking, which must’ve been gin. My mother stood over the floor furnace for a minute or two, holding her drink, then she smiled at me and began to walk around the house looking at pictures on top of the piano, and picking up and examining whatever was on the tables, while I sat on the stiff, wool-covered couch and did nothing but wait. Warren Miller had told us he was cooking Italian chicken, and I was ready to eat it.
Walking around Warren Miller’s house my mother looked pretty in her green dress and green shoes. I remember that very well. She had gotten warm standing over the furnace, and her face was pink. She was smiling as she looked around, touching things as if she liked everything that was there.
‘So,’ Warren Miller called out from the kitchen, ‘how’s your old man doing, Joe?’ He was talking loud, and we couldn’t see him, though we could hear him cooking, rattling pans and making noises. I wished I could’ve seen inside the kitchen, but I couldn’t.
