Nothing but Blue Skies

20

Wonderful suburbs! Wonderful with their regular streets and amiable rivalry of lawns! They were as successful as that assemblage of animals that make up a coral reef. Frank strolled through the heartening rectangles of Antelope Heights, savoring the color schemes, the orderly parking habits, the individuality of the mailboxes — some mounted on wagon wheels, some of fiberglass with brightly colored pheasants molded into the sides (must be a hunter in there!), some that anticipated only letters and some that anticipated great big packages. One or two lawns had the outlines of snarling rottweilers with blazing red eyes on stakes driven into the sod to indicate the presence of a guard dog, but by now everyone knew you just bought the sign and saved on dog food. There was a sweet cacophony of sounds which included television, radio, stereo, practice on musical instruments and the muffled shop tools in the basements of hobbyists. Frank wanted to be here among the families, to watch them in their ordinariness, that most elusive of all qualities. To simply carry on and ignore all that is unthinkable seemed to require a special gift; and, in the end, the world belonged to those who never thought about nuclear holocaust, the collapse of the biosphere or even their own perfectly predictable deaths. Carry on! Who made the playoffs? Let’s eat! Let’s eat something!

Frank walked softly past one of the rottweiler signs toward the well-lighted outline of a small mock Tudor painted in the cheerful colors of the Bahamas, pink and blue. There was a side yard that separated this house from its neighbor, a house with a For Sale sign in its yard, perfectly dark so that Frank could observe this family without thinking about the house behind him. Unfortunately, when he reached the beginning of the side yard, the guard dog exploded into his view, rigid against a short length of steel chain. Its rage and astonishment at finding Frank there reduced its snarl to something so internal as to be past a warning and simply the prelude to an attack.

“Ooh, datsa big fellow,” Frank murmured, backing away. He made himself feel, through waves of terror, real affection for this dog on the theory that any insincerity on his part and the dog would uproot the chain and tear his face off, leaving not even lips to offer an explanation to the homeowners. Frank made like a love-sodden star of some Podunk gospel hour and backed away into the next yard where he fell over the For Sale sign. A floodlight went on and, even though he was seated on the lawn, he cast a long black shadow in its harsh light. There was somebody standing on the front porch of the house.

“Frank?”

“Yes?”

“Frank Copenhaver?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Steve Jensen.”

“Oh hey, Steve!”

Steve, one of the doctors who rented from Frank, was having a wonderful time atop Phil’s wife Kathy, a remarkable lapse in his closely planned life. Frank was conscious of the acrimony over the clinic rent. He was even more sensitive to looking like an intruder.

“Frank, what are you doing?”

Frank decided to go into microfocus. “Tripped over this blasted sign,” he called out. “Fell on my butt!” He had a hold of the stake of the sign and was looking closely at the lettering. He could see the brush strokes in the paint.

Jensen walked over to where Frank now stood dusting the seat of his trousers. He looked at Frank blankly and then very slowly a knowing smile came over his face. He laughed to himself. Frank just waited. Jensen looked off, smiling, then turned back to Frank. “You’re checking out this house, Frank. I know you. You don’t want the realtors knowing you’re interested. Talk about your covert operations!”

“You gonna tell?”

“No, I’m not gonna tell.”

Frank batted him playfully on the shoulder. “You promise you’re not gonna tell?”

“I promise I’m not going to tell.”

“Steve —”

“What?”

“I owe you one.” Frank dropped his head submissively.

Frank declined Steve’s offer of a drink. He didn’t want to get into anything intimate about the clinic, much less discuss his hosing Phil’s wife. Gesturing to the house next door, Frank said that he had seen enough, and indeed he had; but the desire for the ordinary was still in him and it was heightened the minute he contemplated returning to his empty house. Steve commented that it was amusing that Frank even left his car elsewhere, calling it “extreme realtor fear.”

Frank could only go along with these spiraling witticisms. These days, everything took such a long explanation, it was turning smart people into mutes. Combining the knowing look with absentmindedness was the great modern social skill as far as Frank was concerned, and he thought he had it down pretty fair. It would never occur to the doctor that this was a new Frank, certainly not the one who acquired and managed the clinic so acceptably over the years. This was the night Frank. This was the solitaire who feared that happiness was past. This was the roaming dog.

But he had extraordinary luck just a few blocks away, a couple helping their daughter, who was maybe twelve years old, with her homework. They sat around the kitchen table, the mother right next to the struggling child, the father sipping coffee and pitching in when he had an answer. Frank tried to remember how much of this he had done with Gracie and Holly. He tried to be ironic about the golden light that flooded these three people from the opulent globe over the table. The schoolbook lay open in front of the pretty child next to a heap of marvelously rumpled papers. Steam rose from the coffee. The mother had pinned her hair up to keep it out of her way. The father sharpened a pencil. Frank thought these people had not always lived in town and were buoyed by the convenience of their suburb, the handy shopping, the populous grade school. Good grief, it was an American family! Frank rested his chin on the windowsill and gazed upon this rapturous scene, shriven by time, tears pouring down his face. We used to be one of those, he told himself. We had that in our hands.