The Lay of the Land

  And oh, yes, along the course, he also wanted to make good on some men’s daughters and wives. On Clarissa. My Clarissa. My prize. My lifesaver. My un-innocent innocent. She was number 1001.

  If I had a pistol instead of a handful of house-for-sale sheets, I’d shoot Thom right in the chest in the midst of their cheery bagel ’n cream cheese, eggs ’n bacon ambience, let him slump onto his Foreign Affairs and drag him out to the beach for the gulls. (Since I’ve had cancer, I’ve compiled an impressive list of people to “take with me” when things get governmentally irreversible—as they soon will. If I survive the hail of bullets, I’ll happily spend my last days in a federal lockup with books to read, three squares, and limited TV in the senior block. You can imagine who I’ll be seeking out. Thom is my new entry.)

  “…This is my dad, Frank Bascombe,” Clarissa mutters, head down over her Orvis catalog. She casually retracts her shoe-less foot out of Thom’s lap, gives her big toe a good scratching, then absently, lightly fingers the tiny red whelp where her diamond nose stud used to be. Breakfast dishes are disposed in front of them—bagel crescents, melted butter globs, a bowl of cereal bits afloat on a gray skim of milk product.

  I proffer a hand insincerely across Clarissa. “Hi there,” I say. Big smile.

  “Thom van Ronk, sir.” Thom looks up suddenly from Foreign Affairs, now smiling intensely. He shakes my hand without standing. Van Ronk. Not a Berber, but a treacherous Walloon. Clarissa could’ve been smarter than this.

  “What’s shakin’ in Foreign Affairs, Thom?” I say. “Brits still won’t go for the Euro? Ruskies struggling with a market economy? The odd massacre needing interpreting?” I smile so he knows I hate him. Every person he’s ever known hates him—except my daughter, who doesn’t like my tone of voice and glares up from her page of Gore-Tex trekking mocs to burn a dead-eyed frown into me promising complex punishments later. They’d be worth it.

  “Your son, aka my brother, paid us a visit already this morning,” Clarissa says, nestling her heel back comfy into Thom’s penile package, while he re-finds his place in his important reading material. They seem to have known each other for a year. Possibly they’re already on the brink of the kind of familiarity that leads to boredom—like a ball bearing seeking the ocean bottom. I hope so. Though neither of my wives ever stuck her heel into my package while fingering up breakfast crumbs. At Harvard, there’s probably a course for this in the mental-health extension program: Morning-After Etiquette: Do’s, Don’ts, Better Nots. “He seemed—surprise, surprise—extremely weird.” She casts a bored look out at the beach to where the Shore Police are grilling some local teens freed from school for the holiday. “He’s not as weird, though, as his girlfriend. Miss Jill.” She frowns at the boys, four in all, with shaved heads, butt-crack jeans, long Jets and Redskins jerseys. Two enormous, hulking, hatless policemen in shorts are making the boys form a line and turn their pockets out alongside the black-and-white Isuzu 4 × 4. All of them are laughing.

  Clarissa, I understand to be musing over the fact that mere mention of her brother makes her revert to teen vocabulary ten years out-of-date, when Paul was “weird beyond pathetic, entirely out of it, deeply disgusting and queer,” etc. She’s sophisticated enough not to care, only to notice. She and her strange brother maintain an ingrown, not overtly unfriendly détente she doesn’t talk about. Paul admires and is deeply in love with her for being glamorous and a (former) lesbian and for stealing a march on transgressive behavior, which had always been his speciality. (I’m sure he was pleased to meet Thom.) Clarissa recognizes his right to be an insignificant little midwestern putzburger, card writer and Chiefs fan, someone she’d never have one thing to do with if he wasn’t her brother. It’s possible they’re in contact about their mother and me by e-mail, though I’m not sure when they last saw each other in the flesh, or if Clarissa could even be nice to him in person. Parents are supposed to know these things. I just don’t.

  Though there’s also an old, murky shadow over their brother-sister bond. When Paul was seventeen and Clarissa fifteen, Paul in a fit of confusion apparently “suggested”—I’m not sure how—that he and Clarissa engage in a “see-what-it’s-like” roll in the hay, which pretty much KO’d further sibling rapport. It’s always possible he was joking. However, three years ago—he told his mother this—Paul was summoned to Maine by Clarissa and Cookie, given a ticket to Bangor, brought down to Pretty Marsh by bus, then forced to sleep in a cold cabin and endure an inquisition for misfeasances he wouldn’t go into detail about (reportedly “the usual brother-sister crap”), though clearly for trying to make Clarissa do woo-woo with him when she was underage and his sister. Paul said the two women were savage. They said he should be ashamed of himself, should seek counseling, was probably gay, wasn’t manly, had self-esteem issues, was likely an addicted onanist and premature ejaculator—the usual things sisters think about brothers. He told Ann he finally just gave in (without specifically admitting to what) when they said none of it was his fault, but was actually Ann’s and mine, and that they felt sorry for him. Then they each gave him a hug that he said made him feel crazy. They ended the afternoon with Paul showing them some of his sidesplitting “Smart Aleck” cards—the Hallmark line he writes for out in K.C.—and throwing his voice into the bedroom, and laughing themselves silly before sitting down to a big lobster dinner. He went home the next day.

  “What’s wrong with Jill?” I say.

  “Way-ell.” Clarissa casts an eyebrows-raised look of appraisal up at me. She can’t see well without her contacts.

  Thom suddenly snaps to, grins, showing huge incisors, blinks his eyes and says, “What? Sorry. I wasn’t listening.”

  “Did he tell you she only has one hand? I mean she’s perfectly okay. They probably love each other. But yeah. It’s fine, of course. It’s not a problem.”

  “One hand?” I say.

  “The left one.” Clarissa bites the corner of her mouth. “I mean she’s right-handed, so to speak.”

  “Where’d it go?” I have both of mine. Everybody I know has both of theirs. I of course know people suffer such things—all the time. It shouldn’t be a shock that Paul romances a girl with only one arm. But it is. (Never wonder what else can happen next. Much can.)

  “We didn’t get into it.” Clarissa shakes her head, her foot still tucked away in plain sight into Thom’s man department. “I guess they met on-line. But she actually works where he works, whatever that’s called. The card company.” (She knows what it’s called.)

  I say, “Maybe she works in the sympathy-card department.”

  Clarissa smiles an unfriendly smile and gives me one of her long looks that means everything I say is wrong. “A lot of people who write sympathy cards have disabilities themselves. She did tell us that—apropos of nothing. They didn’t stick around that long. I think he wants to surprise you.” She prisses her lips and goes back to her Orvis catalog.

  Clarissa, who’s my only earthly ally, if provoked in front of Thom, will jump to Paul’s and one-arm Jill’s defense for anything inappropriate in my body language, facial expression, much less my word-of-mouth. Never mind that she thinks it’s all the strangest of strange. Paul may have hired an actor to bring home just to drive us all crazy. It’s in his realm. Otto in a skirt.

  “They said they were going to ‘pick up a motel room.’” Clarissa’s very businessy-sarcastic now because she wants to be—but I can’t be. “They’re going to Ann’s for dinner.” (First names only here.) I don’t want to tell her I’ve invited Ann for Thanksgiving and hear from her what an insanely bad idea it is. “Surprises all around. She’ll flip.” Clarissa executes a perfectly glorious smile that says, I wish I could be there.

  Words, I find, are not in full abundance. “Okay,” I say.

  “We’re going to Atlantic City, by the way.” She extends a hand over onto velvety Thom’s singleted shoulder and rolls her eyes upward (in mockery). Thom seems confused—that so much could go on in one family in so short
a period of time without any of it being about him. “We’ll be back in the morning.” More woogling, this time at Trump’s. “I’m going to try my luck at roulette.” She pats Thom’s tawny, muscular thigh right where the shark took its nip or where he rappelled down the face of Mount whatever. Maybe they’ll see the Calderons at the free high-roller buffet.

  “Then I think I’ll just go off and try to sell a house.” I grin insincerely.

  “Okay now, is that what you do?” Thom blinks at me. The widely separated corners of his mouth flicker with a smile that may be amused or may be amazed but is not interested.

  “Pretty much.”

  “Great. Do you do commercial or just houses?” His smile’s tending toward being amused. I’m sure his father did commercial in Rio and printed his own currency.

  “Mostly residential,” I say. “I can always use a mid-career salesman, if you’re interested. I have a Tibetan monk working for me right now who’s maybe going to leave. You’d have to take the state test, and I get half of everything. I’d put you on salary for six months. You’d probably do great.”

  Amazement. His teeth are truly enormous and white and unafflicted by worry. He likes flashing them as proof of invulnerability.

  “I’ve got my hands pretty full at the Down’s center,” he says, smiling self-beknightedly.

  “Do those little devils really stay on a horse without being wired on?”

  “You bet they do,” Thom says.

  “Does riding horses cure Down’s syndrome?”

  “There isn’t any cure.” Clarissa smacks shut her Orvis catalog and retracts her heels from Thom’s scrotal zone. It’s time to go. This is her house, too, she wants me to understand—though it isn’t. It’s mine. “You know it doesn’t cure Down’s syndrome, you cluck.” She starts gathering dishes and ferrying them noisily to the sink. “You should come over and volunteer, Frank. They’ll let you ride a pony if you want to. No wires.” Her back is to me. Thom’s gazing at me wondrously, as if to say, Yep, you’re getting a good scolding now, I’m sorry it has to happen, but it does.

  “Great,” I say jovially, and give Thom a chummy grin that says we men are always in the line of female fire. I pop the spindled listing sheets in my palm—three times for emphasis. “You kids have yourselves some fun pissing Thom’s money away.”

  “Yeah, we will,” Clarissa says from the sink. “We’ll think of you. Paul has a time capsule with him. I almost forgot. He wants us to put something in it and bury it someplace.” She’s smirking as she rinses cups and doesn’t turn around. Though this occasions a troubled look from Thom, as if Paul’s a sad soul who’s made all our lives one endless hell on earth.

  “That’ll be great,” I say.

  Clarissa says, “What’re you going to put in it?”

  “I’ll have to think. Maybe I’ll put in my Michigan diploma, with a listing sheet. ‘Once there was a time when people lived in things called houses—or in their parents’ houses.’ You can put your old—”

  “I’ll think about me,” Clarissa says. She knows what I was about to suggest. Her nose stud.

  I consider confessing that I’ve invited her mother for Thanksgiving—just to discourage Thom from coming. But I’m late and don’t have time for an argument. “Don’t forget you’re the acting lady of the house tomorrow. I’m depending on you to be a gracious hostess.”

  “Who’s the husband?”

  “I hope you sell a house,” Thom says. “Is that what you want to do? My dad was in real estate. He sold big office buildings. He—” I’m on my way to the front door and miss the rest.

  9

  Up again, old heart. Everything good is on the highway. In this instance, New Jersey Route 35, the wide mercantile pike up Barnegat Neck, whose distinct little beach municipalities—Sea-Clift, Seaside Park, Seaside Heights, Ortley Beach—pass my window, indistinguishable. For practical-legal reasons, each boro has its separate tax collector, deeds registry, zoning board, police, fire, etc., and local patriots defend the separate characters as if Bay Head was Norway and Lavallette was France. Though I, a relative newcomer (eight years), experience these beach townlettes as one long, good place-by-an-ocean and sell houses gainfully in each. And particularly on this cold, clearing morning when it’s reassuring as a fifties memory all up the Shore, I thank my lucky stars for landing me where they did.

  Christmas decorations are going up in the morning sunshine. The streets crew is stringing red-and-green plastic bunting to the intersection wires, and swagging the firemen’s memorial at Boro Hall. Candy-cane soldiers have appeared on the median strip, and a crèche with bearded, more authentic burnoose-clad Semites is now up on the lawn of Our Lady of Effectual Mercy. No revolving lights are in place. A banner announcing a Cadillac raffle and a Las Vegas Night stands on the lawn by the announcements case offering CONFESSIONS ANYTIME.

  In Frederick Schruer’s History of Garden State Development: A Portrait in Contrasts, Conflicts and Chaos (Rutgers, 1984), Sea-Clift is favorably referred to as the “Classic New Jersey Shore Townlette.” Which means that owing to the beach and the crowds, we’re not a true suburb, though there’re plenty of pastel split-levels on streets named Poseidon, Oceania and Pelagic. Neither are we exactly a fishing village, though flounder fishermen and day charters leave from the bay-side wharf. We’re also not exactly a resort town, since most of the year tourists are gone and the steel Fun Pier’s ancient and the rides closed for being life-threatening. There’s not even that much to do in summer except float along in the crowds, hang out in the motel or on the beach, eat, drink, rent a boogie board or stare off.

  There is a mix, which has encouraged a positivist small-businessman spirit that’s good for real estate. The 2,263 year-rounders (many are south Italians with enormous families) run things, own most of the businesses, staff the traffic court, police and fire—which makes Sea-Clift more like Secaucus than the ritzier enclaves north of us. Our town fathers long ago understood that xenophobia, while natural to the species, will get you broke quick in a beach town, and so have fostered a not so much “Mia casa é tua casa” spirit as a more level-headed “Your vacation is my financial viability” expedience, which draws eight jillion tourists to our summer streets, plus a stream of new semi-affluent buy-ins from Perth Amboy and Metuchen, all of it spiced with Filipinos, Somalians and hard-working Hondurans (who come for the schools) to brew up a tranquil towny heterogeneity that looks modern on paper without feeling much different from the way things have always felt.

  For me, transacting the business of getting people situated under roofs and into bearable mortgages and out again, Sea-Clift couldn’t be a better place—real estate being one of our few year-round business incubators. People are happy to see my face, know that I’m thriving and will be there when the time comes, but still don’t have to have me to dinner. In that way, I’m a lot like a funeral home.

  Very little’s abuzz and about today in spite of Thanksgiving being tomorrow. A few home owners down the residential streets are employed in pre-holiday cleanup, getting on ladders, opening the crawl space for termite checks, putting up storms, spooling hoses, closing off spigots, winterizing the furnace. In a town where everybody comes in the summer, now’s when many year-rounders take their three-day trips—to Niagara and the Vietnam Memorial—since the town’s theirs and empty and can be abandoned without a worry. Which doesn’t make now a bad selling season, since niche buyers come down when the throngs are gone, armed with intent and real money to spend.

  Of course, now’s when any prudent newcomer—a software kingpin with new development dollars—would notice all that we don’t offer: any buildings of historical significance (there are no large buildings at all); no birthplaces of famous inventors, astronauts or crooners. No Olmsted parks. No fall foliage season, no sister city in Italy or even Germany. No bookstores except one dirty one. Mark Twain, Helen Keller or Edmund Wilson never said or did anything memorable here. There’s no Martin Luther King Boulevard, no stations on the Unde
rground Railroad (or any railroad) and no golden era anyone can recollect. This must be true for plenty of towns.

  There is, however, little teen life, so car thefts and break-ins are rare. You can smoke in our restaurants (when they’re open). The Gulf Stream moderates our climate. Our drinking water’s vaguely salty, but you get used to it. We were never a temperance town, so you can always find a cocktail. College Board scores match the state average. Two Miss Teenage New Jerseys (’41 and ’75) hail from here. We stage an interesting Frank Sinatra impersonator contest in the spring. Our town boundary abuts a state park. Cable’s good. And for better or worse, the hermit crab is our official town crustacean—though there’s disagreement over how large the proposed statue should be. You could also say that for a town founded by enterprising Main Line land speculators on the bedrock principles of buy low/sell high, we’ve exceeded our municipal mission with relatively few downsides. Since we’re bounded by ocean and bay, there’re few places where planning problems could ever arise. Water is our de facto open space plus a good population stabilizer. For a time, I sat on the Dollars For Doers Strike Council, but we never did much besides lower parking fines, pass a good-neighbor ordinance so tourists could reach the beach via private property, and give the Fun Pier a rehabilitation abatement the owners never used. Our development committee extended feelers to a culinary arts academy seeking growing room—though we didn’t have any. There was a citizen’s initiative for a new all-cement promenade, but it failed, and for establishing a dinosaur park, though we hadn’t had any dinosaurs and couldn’t legally claim one. Still, as old-timey, low-ceiling and down-market as Sea-Clift is, most people who live here like it that way, like it that we’re not a destination resort but are faithful to our original charter as a place an ordinary wage earner comes for three days, then beats it home again—a town with just a life, not a lifestyle.