Vintage Ford (24 page)

And that was how we did that. Just another kind of regular life between us. I went to school, did my work, came home nights. She stayed in the big house with my dog. Read. Cooked lunches for herself. Watched the World Series. Watched Sadat be assassinated. Looked out the window. At night we talked. I did my school work, went out not very much. With my wife, who was working in New York and commuting up on weekends, we went on country drives, invited visitors, paid visits, lived together as we had in places far and wide all those years. I don't know what else we were supposed to do, how else that time was meant to pass.

On a sunny day in early November, when she had been with me three weeks and we were, in fact, out of things to do and talk about, she sat down beside me on the couch and said, “Richard, I'm not sure how much longer I can look out after myself. I'm sorry. But it's just the truth.”

“Does that worry you?” I said.

“Well,” my mother said, “yes. I'm not scheduled to go into Presbyterian Village until way next year. And I'm not quite sure what I'm going to be able to do until then.”

“What would you like to do?” I said.

“I don't exactly know,” she said. And she looked worried then, looked away out the window, down the hill, where the trees were bare and it was foggy.

“Maybe you'll start to feel better,” I said.

“Well, yes. I could. I suppose that's not impossible,” she said.

“I think it's possible,” I said. “I do.”

“Well. Okay,” my mother said.

“If you don't,” I said, “if by Christmas you don't feel you can do everything for yourself, you can move in with us. We're moving back to Princeton. You can live there.”

And I saw in my mother's eyes, then, a light. A
kind
of light, anyway. Recognition. Relief. Concession. Willingness.

“Are you sure about that?” she said and looked at me. My mother's eyes were very brown, I remember.

“Yes, I'm sure,” I said. “You're my mother. I love you.”

“Well,” she said and nodded. No tears. “I'll begin to think toward that, then. I'll make some plans about my furniture.”

“Well, wait,” I said. And this is a sentence I wish, above all sentences in my life, I had never said. Words I wish I'd never heard. “Don't make your plans yet,” I said. “You might feel better by then. It might not be necessary to come to Princeton.”

“Oh,” my mother said. And whatever had suddenly put a light in her eyes suddenly went away then. And her worries resumed. Whatever lay between then and later rose again. “I see,” she said. “All right.”

I could've not said that. I could've said, “Yes, make the plans. In whatever way all this works out, it'll be just fine. I'll see to that.” But that is what I didn't say. I deferred instead to something else, to some other future, and at least in retrospect I know what that future was. And, I think, so did she. Perhaps you could say that in that moment I witnessed her facing death, saw it take her out beyond her limits, and feared it myself, feared all that I knew; and that I clung to life, to the possibility of life and change. Perhaps I feared something more tangible. But the truth is, anything we ever could've done for each other after that passed by then and was gone. And even together we were alone.

What remains can be told quickly. In a day or two I drove her to Albany. She was cold, she said, in my house, and couldn't get warm, and would be better at home. That was our story, though there was not heat enough anywhere to get her warm. She looked pale. And when I left her at the airport gate she cried again, stood and watched me go back down the long corridor, waved a hand. I waved. It was the last time I would see her that way. On her feet. In the world. We didn't know that, of course. But we knew something was coming.

And in six weeks she was dead. There is nothing exceptional about that to tell. She never got to Princeton. Whatever was wrong with her just took her over. “My body has betrayed me” is one thing I remember her saying. Another was, “My chances now are slim and none.” And that was true. I never saw her dead, didn't care to, simply took the hospital's word about it when they called. Though I saw her face death that month, over and over, and I believe because of it that seeing death faced with dignity and courage does not confer either of those, but only pity and helplessness and fear.

All the rest is just private—moments and messages the world would not be better off to know. She knew I loved her because I told her so enough. I knew she loved me. That is all that matters to me now, all that should ever matter.

And so to end.

Does one ever have a “relationship” with one's mother? No. I think not. The typical only exists in the minds of unwise people. We—my mother and I—were never bound together by guilt or embarrassment, or even by duty. Love sheltered everything. We expected it to be reliable, and it was. We were always careful to say it—“I love you”—as if a time might come, unexpectedly, when she would want to hear that, or I would, or that each of us would want to hear ourselves say it to the other, only for some reason it wouldn't be possible, and our loss would be great—confusion. Not knowing. Life lessened.

My mother and I look alike. Full, high forehead. The same chin, nose. There are pictures to show that. In myself I see her, even hear her laugh. In her life there was no particular brilliance, no celebrity. No heroics. No one crowning achievement to swell the heart. There were bad ones enough: a childhood that did not bear strict remembering; a husband she loved forever and lost; a life to follow that did not require comment. But somehow she made possible for me my truest affections, as an act of great literature would bestow upon its devoted reader. And I have known that moment with her we would all like to know, the moment of saying, “Yes. This is what it is.” An act of knowing that certifies love. I have known that. I have known any number of such moments with her, known them even at the instant they occurred. And now. And, I assume, I will know them forever.

VINTAGE BOOKS BY RICHARD FORD

Independence Day

In this visionary sequel to
The Sportswriter
, Richard Ford deepens his portrait of Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible characters in American fiction, and in doing so, gives the reader an unforgettable account of American life.

Fiction/0-679-73518-6

A Multitude of Sins

In this masterful collection of short stories, Richard Ford's distinct settings offer journeys through delicate ethical terrain, as he examines liaisons in and out and to the sides of marriage.

Fiction/0-375-72656-X

A Piece of My Heart

The story of two men—one pursuing a woman, the other pursuing his heart—drawn by chance and mystery to an uncharted island in the Mississippi River.

Fiction/0-394-72914-5

Rock Springs

In these ten stories, Richard Ford mines literary gold from the wind-scrubbed landscape of the American West—and from the guarded hopes and gnawing loneliness of the people who live there.

Fiction/0-394-75700-9

The Sportswriter

The Sportswriter
introduces readers to Frank Bascombe, a former novelist turned sportswriter, who, in the course of an Easter week, loses the remnants of his familiar life.

Fiction/0-679-76210-8

The Ultimate Good Luck

Set in the teeming streets of Oaxaca, Mexico,
The Ultimate Good
Luck
is a brilliantly evocative portrait of the alienation and dislocation of a Vietnam veteran.

Fiction/0-394-75089-6

Wildlife

In this heartbreaking and compelling novel, a family moves to Montana in search of opportunity and instead encounters the forces that will test it to the breaking point.

Fiction/0-679-73447-3

Women with Men

In three long stories, Richard Ford takes us from the plains of Montana to the streets of Paris to the suburbs of Chicago, where his characters experience the consolations and complications that prevail in matters of passion, romance, and love.

Fiction/0-679-77668-0

Richard Ford

VINTAGE FORD

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1944. After graduating from high school, he left Mississippi to attend Michigan State University and went on for graduate work at the University of California at Irvine. Ford completed his first novel,
A Piece of My Heart
, in 1976, which, along with his subsequent novels,
The Ultimate Good Luck
(1981),
The
Sportswriter
(1986), and his collection of short stories,
Rock
Springs
(1987), earned him an Award in Literature and the Award for Merit in the Novel from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1989. Ford received further acclaim for his novels,
Wildlife
(1990) and
Independence
Day
(1995), a sequel to
The Sportswriter
and the first book ever to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award. His most recent publications are the collections of short stories,
Women with Men
(1997) and
A Multitude of Sins
(2001), for which he became the recipient in 2001 of the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. Along with his other various accolades, Ford has been elected a member of the American Academy and of the French Order of Arts and Letters.

BOOKS BY RICHARD FORD

A Piece of My Heart
The Ultimate Good Luck
The Sportswriter
Rock Springs
Wildlife
Independence Day
Women with Men
A Multitude of Sins

A VINTAGE ORIGINAL, JANUARY 2004

Copyright © 2004 by Richard Ford

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American
Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by
Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks
of Random House, Inc.

The pieces herein first appeared in collected form in the following works:
“Communist” was originally published in
Rock Springs,
copyright © 1987 by Richard Ford
(Vintage Books, 1988). “Reunion” was originally published in
A Multitude of Sins,
copyright © 2001 by Richard Ford (Vintage Books, 2003). “Calling” was originally
published in
A Multitude of Sins,
copyright © 2001 by Richard Ford (Vintage Books, 2003).
Selection from
Independence Day,
copyright © 1995 by Richard Ford (Vintage Books, 1996).
“The Womanizer” was originally published in
Women with Men,
copyright © 1997
by Richard Ford (Vintage Books, 1998). “Rock Springs” was originally published in
Rock Springs,
copyright
©
1987 by Richard Ford (Vintage Books, 1988). “My Mother, In
Memory” was originally published in
Harper's Magazine.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ford, Richard, 1944–
Vintage Ford / Richard Ford.—1st Vintage Books ed.
p. cm.
Contents: “Communist” from Rock Springs—“Reunion” from A multitude of sins—
“Calling” from A multitude of sins—Selection from Independence Day—“The
womanizer” from Women with men—“Rock Springs” from Rock Springs—My
mother, in memory.

I. Title
PS3556.O713A6 2003
813'.54—dc22 2003060283

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eISBN: 978-0-307-42998-8

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