Finding Mrs. Ford Read online

  “Hey!” Annie blurted. “Wanna go to Sanders? It’s Friday night and I have nowhere to go. Might as well eat ice cream!”

  Annie, Susan recognized, had just done a generous thing. Maybe Annie had passed the test, after all. Maybe Susan could risk just a bit more. “Sure,” Susan replied. “I’d like that.”

  5

  Thursday, July 12, 1979

  Inexorably, like a waterfall eroding rock, the full throttle rush of Annie worked to soften Susan’s reserve. Perhaps because of the amplitude of God’s gifts to her, Annie exuded no competitive edge. She seemed to genuinely like Susan, which made it impossible for Susan not to like her. Despite their differences, and those certainly outweighed their similarities, Susan was drawn to the pure incandescence of Annie Nelson. She wasn’t sure why Annie was drawn to her.

  Just this afternoon, they’d gone back to Sanders.

  An old-fashioned soda fountain with swiveling stools, Sanders was famous for its hot fudge cream puff. One single cream puff covered the plate, filled with an enormous scoop of vanilla ice cream, all of it slathered in hot fudge. It was large enough to share but Annie and Susan each ordered her own.

  “God, this is good!” Annie said with her mouth full. “What’s the matter? Don’t you like yours?”

  “I do.” Susan picked up her spoon. “Do you know what this is called in France?”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “A profiterole. Isn’t that a great word?”

  “It’s a beautiful word but I’m not gonna remember it.”

  “I told you I lived there, right?”

  “Yes, Susan, you did.”

  “You should go. I think you’d really like it. You’re already so free and easy.”

  “That’s me. Miss Easy Breezy!”

  “It’s a good thing.”

  “My stepfather doesn’t think so.”

  “It’s hard to convey what it was like there, Annie. I lived in a sixth-floor walk-up, and every day, I came home from classes and trudged up those stairs. There was only one toilet on each floor and everyone on the floor shared it. The shower was two flights down and the whole building shared that.

  “I was in shock the first time I saw it. There was a little drippy faucet in the middle of a big tiled room. The water never even got hot. My room was freezing, too. I had to sleep in pajamas, a sweater, and socks. I never got warm the entire time I was there. But I loved it!”

  “Can I eat yours?” Annie asked as she fixed her eyes on Susan’s barely touched plate.

  “Sure,” Susan said, pulling herself out of her memories. She passed her plate across the table. As Annie reached out to take it, her sleeve slid up her arm, revealing a nasty contusion. “What happened to you?” Susan gasped.

  “What?” Annie yanked down her sleeve and took another bite of cream puff.

  “Your arm, Annie! That bruise is horrible! Do you want me to look at it again? Maybe put something on it?”

  “No! God, Susan, it’s just a bruise. Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “It’s…I’m sorry.” Susan had a squeamish feeling of wandering into taboo territory. “I…uh…what happened?”

  “I walked into a door. You’ve seen me walk. I’m clumsy.”

  “Oh. Well, can I do something?”

  “I said no. Anyway, back to Paris. Your description doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

  Susan studied Annie who kept her eyes fixed on her plate. It was unmistakable that the subject was firmly closed. Finally, she continued, “Well, that’s probably not the adjective I’d choose. I think we Americans overrate the pleasant. Yes, certain aspects of life were less convenient there. But convenience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Anyway, I loved it. I wanted to stay forever.”

  “Do you really talk like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “We Americans overrate the pleasant?”

  Susan reddened. “I don’t mean to sound pretentious. It’s just that it was all so different from here. I mean, look at this. This shopping center, this parking lot.” Susan gestured toward the seemingly endless expanse of parked cars.

  “I get it. I’d like to get out of here too. I think what you’ve done is pretty amazing! Kinda free and easy.” Annie winked at her.

  She laughed uneasily. “That’s probably the first time I’ve ever been called that.”

  “I don’t know,” said Annie. “Still waters run deep, right?”

  Susan smiled, but she could not lose the image of that enormous bruise on Annie’s arm.

  * * *

  Hours later, Susan remained unsettled. She paced the floors of her family’s house, avoiding the boards that creaked. Slumber eluded her, and her book had lost its appeal. Elton had long been asleep, if he’d ever even been awake. Nights at home were the hardest. Mother gone. Father going. Susan felt like the last man standing at the station, the train chugging off in the distance. And now, Annie had entered her life, like an apparition in a gothic novel.

  She shook off that dramatic thought and wandered into the living room where she clicked on the TV.

  “Good evening. This is Bill Bonds with Action News. First up, we go to Chicago where a bizarre event is still unfolding at this hour. In a baseball-double-header with the Detroit Tigers, a promotional stunt by White Sox management has turned violent.

  “‘Disco Demolition Night’ they called it and disc-jockey, Steve Dahl, was hired to deliver it. In a season of sluggish ticket sales, they wanted to fill Comiskey Park. Dahl enlisted an ‘Anti-Disco Army’ to do it. Admission was set at ninety-eight cents plus one disco record, which Dahl promised to blow up on the field between games.

  “Expected turn-out of twenty thousand people was quickly surpassed. Current estimates range from fifty to ninety thousand individuals converging in and around the stadium.

  “From the start, the rambunctious fans threw records at the players, but the Tigers won Game One, four to one. Between games, Dahl blew up the crate of records, did a victory lap, and left the stadium.

  “Then pandemonium broke out. As clean-up began, the crowd poured onto the diamond. For forty minutes, the scene was chaos. Rampagers ripped bases out of the ground, climbed poles, and worsened the damage already done by the explosion.

  “Traffic is currently at a standstill in the immediate vicinity of the stadium. Game Two has been postponed and there is talk of the White Sox being asked to forfeit it. American League President Lee MacPhail will issue his ruling in the morning. Stay tuned for our Action News follow up tomorrow.”

  What on earth did it mean?

  Susan stared at the screen, steeped in her own isolation. Culture wars and violent protests in Chicago—like her life back in Paris, her life with her family, life in general, she might add—it was all out of reach to her here, in the dark, all alone.

  6

  Friday, July 13, 1979

  The telephone shrilled from the wall in the kitchen. Susan tossed her book, jumped out of bed and tore down the hall to answer it. She didn’t know why she was running. If she missed it, they’d certainly call back.

  “Hello?” she panted.

  “Hey. It’s Annie. I know you’re off today, but can you meet for a drink later?”

  “No ice cream?”

  “You never eat yours and I end up eating two. Anyway, I have something I need to tell you. How about Reggie’s at three after I finish work?”

  Susan agreed and returned to her reading, but thoughts of their date kept surfacing. What could Annie possibly need to tell her?

  Susan arrived early and shifted her weight on the sidewalk. Across from her was the General Motors Technical Center, namesake of her workplace, Tech Plaza. The place made her think of her mother.

  Maggie had always tried to lend significance to their little corner of the world. After World War II, she had recounted in one of her stories, General Motors hired Eero Saarinen to carve a sleek creative hub out of the farm fields to the north of the city. President Eisenhower had
even presided over the grand opening.

  No one else remembered any of this. The denizens of the neighborhoods that spread for miles around his minimalist campus had not heard of Mr. Saarinen and would not know his neo-futuristic design if it were sitting in their backyards. Which, as Susan could tell them, it was.

  Opposite was a lunch place called Reggie’s. It was a dark, windowless box. Serving GM executives, from noon to three it teemed with diners, drinkers, and smokers, most of them male. Susan found it an odd choice to meet, but she turned to go inside.

  The last of the men were trailing out, back to their desks for the few remaining hours of the day. They lingered in the foyer, blinking in the light as the door opened, back-slapping and making plans for fishing trips and football pools. Adjusting her eyes to the gloom, Susan paused. A cluster of jacketless, loose-tied men moved past her. One of them, she really couldn’t tell which one when she whipped her head around to look, actually pinched her bottom.

  “Excuse us, darlin’,” said one, smiling broadly.

  “Smile, sweetie,” directed another. “You’ll look much better if you smile.”

  Susan loathed the way men commanded women to smile after an idiotic or lascivious remark. She imagined women, the lot of them, walking around grinning like a bunch of simpletons, grinning when insulted, grinning when pinched. And men receiving these smiles as their birthright.

  Annie arrived to break Susan’s reverie. In her usual high spirits, she flung open the door, banging it back on its hinges. The noise turned every head, but it was Annie who kept them all staring. Annie, of course, was smiling. No one needed to tell her to. And she didn’t look like an idiot. She looked radiant and young and alive. The men were speechless with admiration. Annie clattered past them in her Candies.

  “I’m sorry I’m late! I counted my drawer out wrong, but Nancy helped me get it straight. Let’s sit down.” She looped her arm through Susan’s.

  “It’s all right. I just arrived,” Susan explained as the they made their way to a table.

  Annie sat down with a plop. “Okay, what would you like to drink? My treat. I’m having cranberry juice, but you have a drink. I drink cranberry juice all the time. My doctor says it’s good for my kidneys.”

  “What’s wrong with your kidneys?”

  “Oh, you know.” Annie waved a hand then fiddled in her purse for some lip-gloss, which she applied to her mouth at the table.

  Susan could not imagine Annie having anything wrong with her at all. She watched her closely and uttered the thought that had been percolating since she had met Annie a month ago. “You remind me of my mother.”

  “I can’t believe you just said that to me!”

  “I meant it as a compliment. My mother was glamorous.”

  “If I said that someone reminded me of my mother, they should take it as a major insult. Wait, what do you mean, was?”

  “Oh. My mother died when I was fifteen. I don’t really like to talk about her very much.” Susan rose to take off her sweater. “It’s kind of hot in here, don’t you think?”

  “Not really. No.”

  “I guess I had to think about it for a while.” Susan hesitated before going on. Annie, uncharacteristically for her, allowed Susan her moment. “Anyway, my mother laughed a lot, like you. She was loud, like you. She was carefree, like you. She was just a lot like you. Or, I should say, you’re a lot like her.”

  “Okay. I guess I’m not gonna throw a drink at you. It sounds like you liked your mom.”

  “I did. I loved my mother.”

  “Hey! Guess what? I got a job!” Annie really could change on a dime. Right now, though, Susan was thankful for the lifeline out of a painful subject.

  “Annie, you have a job.”

  “No, but I got a better job. That’s why I wanted to meet you—I want you to get a job there too!”

  “Where?” Susan had no idea why, but her nervous hackles were rising.

  “It’s a disco called Frankie’s. Have you been there? It’s amazing—all silver and black and shiny! And the tips are really good because the girls wear these outfits that look like suits but with the legs out. Kinda like Saturday Night Fever with a vest and shirt and tie. Did I mention the tips?” Annie wrapped up her soliloquy breathlessly.

  “What’ll you ladies have? We’re closing soon, so make it quick,” said their waitress, clearly displeased to see them at the end of the lunch shift. Having met the last bunch of customers on their way out, Susan could certainly sympathize.

  “I’ll have cranberry juice with lots of ice and she’ll have a Black Russian,” Annie ordered for them both.

  “Annie, I don’t want a Black Russian. I’ll have coffee.”

  “You sure? I thought you’d like that, foreign traveler that you are,” Annie winked at her. “How about a White Russian? That’s lighter ‘cause it has cream.”

  “Yes, I’m sure. No Russians,” she laughed. “Just coffee.”

  “Fine,” huffed the waitress, already walking away.

  Susan turned her attention back to Annie. “A disco? That’s funny. Did you see the news last night? That weird thing in Chicago?”

  “I’m not really a news kinda girl. C’mon, Susan, come work at Frankie’s with me.”

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What kind of job is it?”

  “Cocktail waitress! I heard they were looking and I went over and met the boss and he hired me right then. He asked if I have any cute friends who want jobs too. You have to be attractive to work there.”

  “We practically just started at Winkleman’s! I mean, Nancy’s a nice boss and the hours aren’t bad and—I don’t know, Annie.”

  “Oh, come on, Susan! This’ll be fun! And it’ll give you much more money to go back to college this fall.”

  “A suit with no pants? What do you mean, no pants?”

  “They’re not naked! They wear pants, but they’re like bathing suit bottoms.”

  “That sounds horrible.”

  “It’s not. Plus, the boss is really nice. His name is Frankie too. Just like the disco. And he’s sexy.” It was evident from the way Annie threw out this information that she considered it bait.

  “Won’t your parents object? My dad’ll think this is really a bad idea.”

  Annie looked at Susan and, for the first time in the few short weeks of their acquaintance, Susan saw her effervescence dim. “I don’t live with my mother and stepfather. We don’t really get along. I live with my grandmother and she doesn’t ask me a lot of questions.”

  “Oh.” Susan sat back in her chair. She thought about what Annie had just revealed about her family. She thought about her own family—her father, old, sick, and in bed. Her mother, gone six years now. She thought about her boyfriend, Todd—correction: her ex-boyfriend, Todd. Who was in her life to care if she worked in a disco? Her father, surely, but, to be honest, he wouldn’t need to know. He was probably a lot like Annie’s grandmother—there but not really there. Not fully aware of Susan’s comings and goings anymore. What was the difference between her family and Annie’s? Probably not much.

  Susan recognized the tightening stomach, the flush and tingle of rising adrenalin that was taking hold of her, and she acknowledged her familiar companion—fear. She looked at Annie, sitting across from her, appearing utterly fearless. Was she? Or was she just able to mask anxiety? Fear is an emotion that is doled out unevenly. Susan had always grappled with an overabundance of it.

  She remembered lying in bed one night as a little girl. Her parents had music playing down the hall—Moon River—its plaintive chords of loss and longing evoking in her a sensation of dread. Really, it was unmasked fear. Right then, she knew that her father would die while she was still young. The fact that her mother went first was a shock. Susan’s mother was decades younger than her father. It made no sense, but it had happened. The thing she had feared hadn’t happened yet, though she knew it was on its way. The thing she hadn’t had imagination enough to fear had h
appened anyway.

  What difference did her instincts make?

  Susan recognized that Annie’s proposal was a bad idea—uncertain, if not outright risky. In spite of that, or perhaps because of it—to counter her fear, to win against it—Susan said yes. The only reason she listened to Annie that day, got in her car, drove to a disco, and got herself hired as a cocktail waitress was because she was afraid to do so. It was really as simple as that.

  Annie and Susan quit Winkelman’s, their nice boss, Nancy, their daytime hours, their safe routines—and they did it badly. Required to show up at Frankie’s that very weekend to train as waitresses, they left Nancy in the lurch, with no notice of their departure. Susan felt bad about this behavior, but she did it. She was conscious that she was disappointing Nancy but, somehow it seemed that Annie was held less accountable. Annie laughed and kissed Nancy on the cheek, hugging her as she went. Susan followed sheepishly behind, knowing she was doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason and doing it all the same.

  7

  Thursday, August 7, 2014

  Watch Hill

  Susan shifts to the left in her armchair and changes the cross of her legs. She smiles at the FBI agents—a tight, closed-mouthed smile.

  “Do I need a lawyer?” she asks. “Iraq? FBI? This sounds much too serious for a summer morning in Watch Hill.”

  “That’s up to you, Mrs. Ford,” replies the tall one. “But it never hurts to talk to an attorney.”

  Susan looks from one to the other, working a little harder to maintain the appearance of casual control. “Might I ask your names?”

  The taller one responds again. “Yes, of course. Here are our cards. FBI, Boston Field Office.”

  Susan takes two cards handed to her by the one man. “Special Agent DelVecchio? Special Agent Provenzano?”

  “I’m DelVecchio,” the shorter one says, “and he’s Provenzano.”

  “Yes, well, process of elimination.”

  “You’re funny, Mrs. Ford.”