Free Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford Page B

really real. Though plenty happens in the suburbs—in the way that putting a drop of water under an electron microscope reveals civilizations with histories, destinies, and an overpowering experience of the present. “Well. Yes. My goodness, my goodness,” Ms. Pines kept saying in the front entry, the storm door sucking closed behind her, letting outside snow light in around her. “I don’t quite know what to say.” She was shaking her kewpie-doll head that either so much had changed or so little had. We’ve kept the “older-home” fussiness of small rooms, one-way-to-get-anywhere, an inset plaster phone nook, upstairs transoms, and all original fixtures except the kitchen. Sally hates the spiritless open-concept bleakness of the re-purposed. Do I really need a fucking greenhouse? is the way she put it.
    â€œI don’t want to track in snow,” Ms. Pines said.
    â€œThe maid’ll clean it up,” I said. A joke.
    â€œOkay,” she said, in wonderment still. “I . . .”
    â€œHow long since you were here?” I said, still in the TV-silent living room. Ms. P., in the foyer, inched toward the footof the stairs. The narrow hallway past the basement door and on to the kitchen lay ahead—the same house is on thousands of streets, Muncie to Minot.
    Her gaze for a moment carried up the stairs, her lips a tiny bit left apart. “I’m sorry?” she said. She’d heard me but didn’t understand.
    â€œHave you visited before? Since you lived here?”
    â€œOh. No,” Ms. Pines said, registering. “Never. I walked out of this house—this door . . .” She turned toward the glass storm door behind her. “. . . in nineteen sixty-nine, when I was almost seventeen. I was a junior. At Haddam High. I walked to school.”
    â€œMy kids went there,” I said.
    â€œI’m sure.” She looked at me strangely then, as if my presence was a surprise. From the warmth of her red coat, enforced by the warmth of my house, Ms. Pines had begun exuding a sweet floral aroma. Old Rose . A fragrance someone older might’ve worn. Possibly her mother had sniftered it on upstairs in front of the medicine-cabinet mirror, before an evening out with her husband. Where, I wondered, did Negroes go for fun in Haddam, pre-1969? Trenton?
    â€œYou’re absolutely welcome to look around,” I said, extra-obligingly.
    â€œOh, that’s very kind, Mr. Bascombe. I’m feeling a little light-headed.” She re-righted her shoulders and took a firmergrip on her big patent-leather purse. Snow had puddled on the area rug inside the doorway. She was transfixed.
    â€œLet me get you a glass of orange juice,” I said, stepping off past her and down the hall toward the kitchen, where it smelled of Sally’s morning bacon and the Krups cooking breakfast coffee to licorice. I hauled out the Minute Maid carton, found a plastic glass, gushed it full, and came back as fast as I could. Why OJ seemed the proper antidote to being transfixed is anybody’s guess.
    â€œThat’s very nice. Thank you so much,” Ms. Pines said. She hadn’t budged. I put the glass into her un-gloved hand. She took a dainty sip, swallowed, cleared her throat softly, and smiled, touching her glove to her lips, then handed me back the glass, which had decals of leaping green porpoises, from our years on The Shore—gone now except for the glasses. The old-rose fragrance was dense around Ms. Pines, mingling with a faint tang of intimate perspiration.
    â€œLet me take your coat.”
    â€œOh, no,” Ms. Pines said. “I’m not going to impose anymore.”
    From the basement, the heat pump came smoothly to life. A distant murmur.
    â€œYou should just look around,” I said. “I don’t have to go with you. I’ll sit in the kitchen and read the paper or refill the bird feeder for the squirrels. I’m