Nothing but Blue Skies

52

Eileen was working out of her home, which hardly implied a hobby. The front room of her neat house on Cree Street was a smartly arranged office of gray filing cabinets, desk and a copying machine that Frank thought, but was not sure, looked familiar. She welcomed him with a warmth that verged on high-pitched.

“May I sit down?”

“Of course! Will you have anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“Not a thing. But bless your heart, you’re always thinking of me, aren’t you?”

“I tried, I think, Mr. Copenhaver. For a good many years. But we hit a fork in the road when Mrs. Copenhaver, when Mrs. Copenhaver —”

“Yes, it was Fork City all right. But conditions weren’t so bad.”

“They were erratic.”

“But exactly. You had very little response from me by which to measure your efforts. What could be clearer? I had been an attentive businessman. And suddenly you were there rather pointlessly shuffling papers, gathering things for my signature which would remain unsigned for months. You had many hours in which to contemplate your retirement fund and the very negligible contributions of our profit-sharing plan. You took phone numbers from people who would never be called back. You might well have begun feeling almost deceptive having to pretend that you worked for someone who was actually trying to do something with his business. It was your unlucky job to have to dignify my gyrations with a lot of empty words.”

“It wasn’t easy.” She smiled with that peculiar smile which was predicated on the lips either hiding or holding the teeth.

“It wasn’t easy.”

“It wasn’t easy,” she repeated a bit more emphatically. “I did what I could.”

“Of course you did. You were there all day and you did what you could.”

“Yes,” she said. The atmosphere was cooling.

“But the mind tends to run in those circumstances.”

“Not mine!” said Eileen.

“I should have said, ‘The list of options seems to lengthen.’ ”

She decided to listen and see where this was headed.

“It lengthens and lengthens until it is like a long old diamondback rattlesnake that starts way over here and goes wa-ay over there where its head is, slowly raring up to about eye level and saying, ‘Eileen, I’ve got a good idea.’ ”

Frank fell silent. Eileen said nothing. Next to a filing cabinet, the curtain stirred as a car passed the window. Frank placed photocopies of the bad checks in Eileen’s lap, a copy of the statute on fraud and embezzlement, and a set of sentencing guidelines. “All things considered,” he said quietly, “I think we’ll let you keep the gas station. Monday around nine be okay?” He got to his feet and, as orotund as Edward Ballantine, intoned, “Back to rule and regulation,” stretching out the u sounds and elevating the eyebrows. This whole thing was less hearty in tone to Frank than he was letting on. But he was taking charge.

Earlier in the day, he called Holly and they talked for a long while. One thing she had said stuck in his mind:

“Mama pointed out that because you’re my parents, I make the assumption that you’re a unit and that’s not necessarily how you see it. I can’t imagine wanting to be a part of a unit. I mean, I’m not waiting for the door to open so Mr. Right will come and help me form a unit. But I got off on the wrong track with you and Mama. I just looked up and saw: unit. I think you always presented yourselves to me that way. But it’s not your job to set an example.”

“But I’m afraid it is,” said Frank, feeling heat go up the back of his neck. “I know I didn’t do it well. Anyway, I’m sorry your crazy plan didn’t work.”

“You are?”

“Well, I say I am. You know, you can never really go back, sugar.”

“Oh,” she said. “Oh, I know.”

Frank didn’t want to make any such statement. He hoped Holly didn’t take so withering a remark seriously but recognized it simply as a rumor from another country, and that with any luck she’d find herself a fine young anarchist with orange hair, a watercolorist or a Basque separatist, a pretender to the throne of all the Russias, a Suriname hotelier, anything but the ideologue of private property rights she had used so effectively to frighten her parents, which, for what it was currently worth, they would always be.

Edward Ballantine called Frank at his office. His was actually the first call Eileen patched through on her return. It was a small thing, but it gave Frank a sense of welcome regularity to hear her voice identify the caller. He fingered his Dictaphone while he took this call, vowing a blizzard of replies to unanswered mail.

“Frank,” said Edward, “I’m trying to establish a spot for our meeting that doesn’t contain too many unwelcome associations for anybody.”

“Eat shit,” said Frank, tired of all this phony politeness.

“Save it for the meeting, sport. I’m really not hearing you out of that context, except for picking a venue.”

“I thought we were doing this for you in your widely publicized war on deception.”

“It’s not just for me. People need to be able to go on with their lives. We don’t want the setting to be too exceptional. We want it to partake of the everyday.”

“What’ve you come up with so far?” Frank asked, not really knowing what Edward was talking about, relieved to not have to go someplace he associated with uranium or hang gliding or the new spirituality.

“I think I’ve got a great little spot. The Friends Meeting Hall.”

“You mean the Quakers?”

“Yup.”

“We’d have it to ourselves?”

“For as long as we want,” said Edward.

Frank thought this was remarkably like a real estate deal. In some ways, it was also the sort of thing his mother was always putting together on behalf of her book club or canasta group, or a “drive” for caddy scholarships, or the improvement of the rodeo grounds. He didn’t like dignifying their talk with all this emphasis on its location.

He and Edward must have been talking about the schedule because they rang off on Edward’s remark, “See you tomorrow morning, then. At nine.”

Frank drew all the curtains in the office so that his desk lamp illuminated a large circle, as though it were nighttime. He slumped down in his chair, the microphone in his hand, and began flicking mail toward himself and answering it in the most perfunctory manner. He was conscious of the speed at which he was working, challenged even to go faster. He answered several letters with the word “no,” and several others more discursively with the statement “The answer is no.” Each letter he replied to he threw on the floor, and a pile soon grew next to his chair. He said no so often that it occurred to him that someone in the next room might conclude he was being tortured. Documents calling for his signature he threw onto another pile. He took all bills at face value and threw them into the first pile unreviewed. He used to enjoy this, sorting everything into a network of streams; there had been a movement of information between himself, Eileen and the U.S. Postal Service that was like breathing, a cadence that could rise and fall with his business activity. No more. This was like sweeping dead flies out of an abandoned house. Nevertheless, and despite the presence of dividends and rentals and even a token first payment from the chicken hotel, there was a sense of things flowing, generally, in one direction: out. He thought of someone in a deep tub of water who, having opened an artery well below the surface, notices that the water is steadily changing color.

He didn’t really care! Something important was coming up and this wasn’t important. “Easy come, easy go!” he cried out with a chilly laugh. Well, that wasn’t true either. He had worked hard, but it was like childbirth: when it was past, you didn’t remember the pain. In this case, he was indifferent to the child. And yet it was boring to join the millions deploring success. He had, over the predictions of his father, been successful. Since his father was now dead, he could hardly rub his nose in it. And if his father had been alive, he might have enjoyed it. He had lived to see the beginning of Frank’s success and seemed to be pleasantly surprised. It would be nearly impossible for a son to credit to his father such a simple reaction as “pleasantly surprised.” But with several years to contemplate his father’s actual reaction to his business activity, Frank was forced to conclude that his father had been pleasantly surprised. Perhaps suspicion was a father’s obligation to a son — to say equably, “You look like a bum to me,” and remain congenial when junior insinuates the murder in his heart. Anyway, as Frank’s farmer grandmother used to say, “It’s all in the Bible.”

Frank returned from lunch and resumed his dictation. Eileen came in and picked up a tape from him at one point, brought letters for signatures and, at what seemed an arbitrary moment, announced she was going home. Frank looked at his watch: it was five. “Ah, so it is,” he said. “See you in the morning.” She departed with a wry smile. She had fallen from a high place only that week as the owner of her own business and seemed a bit like a captured officer in a POW camp.

And just a minute after Eileen left, Lucy, who must have been stationed nearby, came into his office. This was somehow frightening. He tried to defuse his alarm by tracking it down. He could already see she was conscious of it. He worried that a demand was headed his way and pretended to be groggily emerging from his work instead of what he really was, excessively focused on the moment.

She led with “I see you’re starting to put in full days again.”

“Yeah, I’ve got to.”

“Inspired by what? Embarrassment?”

He tried honesty. “We’ll just have to see.” She was wearing a dark, dyed silk dress that came all the way to her calves, riding boots and a light cotton jacket with pockets so big their tops hung open.

“Did Gracie say anything about the other day?” Lucy asked.

It was pleasant to take this light, inquiring tone, as though that sweaty inadvertence were easily tamed in memory. “No, she didn’t. There really hasn’t been an opportunity.”

“We used to be friends.”

“Well —”

“I thought you had broken up. But this is just one more instance of ‘A stiff prick has no conscience,’ right?”

“Please, Lucy, these phrases.”

“Not ladylike?”

“I don’t know, harsh, I guess.”

“Harsh,” she said, leaning across his desk to slap his face. “I’ll give you harsh.”

“Off we go,” he said, pulling his chin in but not raising his hands to protect himself.

“I’m a travel agent.”

“I know.”

“I’d like to leave it at that.”

“It’s understandable that we try to reach out and have other things in our lives,” he said, but this brought on another ringing slap. He wasn’t quite sure why.

“Write some tickets, go home, eat, go to bed. I was going with a really nice guy, a developer. But Gracie wanted to know how I could cooperate with the degradation of the environment. Who does this big Louisiana cunt think she is?”

“I don’t know, Luce, really I don’t. I’m supposed to find out in the morning.”

“Ah-ha! We’re having a what, a heart-to-heart?”

“I don’t know what to call it. It’s Ed Ballantine’s idea. It’s more their deal than mine. I just said I’d go. My real goal right now is to keep my head above water. I’ve been sort of neglecting things.”

“Neglecting things — you’ve been out of control! You ought to tell Miss Louisiana you can’t live without her and you’re going around causing a lot of harm to other people. Thank God I saw the light and called Jerome.”

“Jerome?”

“The developer! He just did a hundred forty-one single-family dwellings in Salt Lake and he loves me. He loves me. And I’m getting ready to reciprocate my ass off! Why? Because he loves me, me, me.”

He wanted to tell her that he hoped she found a great new life in opportunism. He felt threatened by all this raving and slapping. He didn’t want Gracie so described and he was disgusted with himself to suspect he enjoyed being fought over. And on second thought, he really didn’t; it was like being a meatball thrown into a kennel.

“Anyway,” Lucy said, “I shouldn’t be so tough on you. You don’t have much in the way of a personal life. Maybe you don’t have the capacity. And inside, you may be about as squirrelly as anyone I ever met. But you know, I looked at my little agency. It’s nothing great. I ship bodies. But I do okay and it’s well run. I had to make a decision about my goals. I decided that I’m going to dedicate myself to money. How does that sound? Money, money, money! I can’t change the world. I’m just a little speck. I have to do what everyone else does. I bet I’ll be good at it. I may try to marry that guy and get all the single-family dwellings. I’ll be the queen of the suburbs and everyone will have to do as I say. Things are great. I don’t have cancer that I know of and I have learned several valuable lessons from you. I’m saying hello to everything you’re saying goodbye to. I’m out of here, I’m gone, thanks for the memories.” She pulled her dress up over her hips and pointed to the wedge of white silk over her crotch. “This goes too,” she said, and left the room.

Frank was not at all prepared to leave for home. One of these days soon the bank was going to make its move on his house, maybe even put the notice on the door. There was getting to be some suspense about that. He was still dazed by Lucy’s speech and the sense of having deserved the accusations. But everyone deserved a lifetime of accusations, he believed. Where did this assumption of agreed-upon rules come from? How archaic, he thought. It was like being assaulted by someone in a dirndl. It was like firing a Scud missile into a Christmas parade because you didn’t believe in Santa Claus. He went on like this in faint indignation until that too passed and he mused on his several detachments from any succor that ever came his way. He hadn’t had feelings of fellowship since he was a hippie, or any familial warmth since Gracie hit the road. He felt like a cooling asteroid in an ocean of darkness. And the humiliations were becoming ritualistic. God only knew what the occasion at the Friends Meeting Hall would bring.

He tore through the papers on his desk, hungry for a brainstorm. Michael Milken would be eligible for parole in just three more years owing to possible sentence reductions for his cooperation with prosecutors. Would he be seen as a hero returning from exile at Drexel Burnham Lambert, with possible unseen synergies in the junk bond market? A man who was the equivalent of ten thousand bank robbers would be back in the thrilling soup of American business; and presumably Mr. Frank Copenhaver would have a buck or two to throw into the game. So, there was life. There still was life! He said several more “no”s into the Dictaphone, advising Eileen to use them as she saw best, and called it a day.