Nothing but Blue Skies

4

Frank stretched out on the broad-branched old apple tree with his back to the smooth, cool trunk. Within the canopy of leaves and remaining blossoms of spring he was engulfed in an even deeper darkness than that provided by this still, moonless night. Better yet, he was able to dreamily observe his travel agent, Lucy Dyer, whose office was just down the hall from his and who was one of Gracie’s oldest friends, remove the last of her clothes and stand transfixed in front of the shuddering blue-gray light of the television. She dug her fingers into her scalp and pushed them up through her hair, loosening and letting it fall in a wonderful declaration of day’s end. Frank sighed in his tree and rested his head against the trunk. This was serene.

Many times Lucy and her current beau had dined with Frank and Gracie, and sometimes Lucy came by herself. One wonderful Halloween, Frank, Gracie and Lucy had gone trick-or-treating together. Now her figure swam with the reflected light of world events on the ten o’clock news. When her window finally went dark, Frank slid slowly to the ground in an excited yet peaceful mood and walked through the sounds of the warm night across the subdivision to the railroad tracks, which he followed until the tall mountains behind the town could be made out against the starlight. To the west a faint flickering of lights arose from the interstate, and to the east the distant sound of trucks beginning the pull into the canyon had a kind of cheerfulness.

When he walked into the house, his phone was ringing. He ran to answer. It was Holly. Whenever he heard her voice, he felt something change inside himself: an indifference to time, for one thing, a floaty focus.

“Dad? I’m joining a sorority.” Holly was a sophomore.

“You are?”

“Aren’t you glad?”

“Well, yes, I guess I am. I just thought you were down on sororities.”

“That was before. This is now.”

“Well, yes, I am glad, especially if this means you won’t be living in an apartment.” She knew that was what he felt. He was nervous about her unguarded life at college. Something had gone amiss with men, and the weak ones were dangerous.

“That’s not what it means.”

“Oh, I was hoping it did. Well, did you join one in particular?”

She told him which one it was. He didn’t know one from another. He vaguely used to comprehend all that Greek stuff, with its comic rituals as a precursor to the characters on little motor scooters wearing fezzes. He wished she would be living in a solid building filled with women.

“Actually, Hol, you know what? This is great.” He was determined to be enthusiastic. “How can I celebrate this appropriately?” He was into this one and it showed.

“Why don’t you come up when I get settled in?”

“I’d love to. Just give me the nod and I’m on my way.”

“Yes, that’s what we’ll do. And now I’m headed for the library. Love you, bye.”

Maybe he had become too dependent on Holly, but she didn’t mind, or didn’t let him know she minded. He didn’t think so, but there may well have been an element of kindness.

For a while he couldn’t quite think of his work in an orderly way. If he couldn’t see how to get insanely rich or change the world in one or two days, he hardly wanted to go to work at all. Finally, he began to take it seriously again. His work had a fairly large value to him viewed purely as routine. At forty-four (his friends had made him a cake, a corona of birthday candles and a chocolate pistol with the red number 44), he couldn’t make out whether he was young or old, and for many reasons he didn’t want to find out through the women in his life. After Gracie left, Frank detected that most people found him a little eerie. He could make them laugh, yet they always felt scrutinized. Some people could stand that and some couldn’t. Examination was his disease. He often saw it in the faces of the people he cared for the most. Some of his adversaries in business saw him as a person of subdued and calculating malice. Frank was kind of proud of that. It was too bad when people he cared about felt eroded by his attention. But Holly wasn’t one of them.