Where I'm Calling From

father. I can help. I’m glad I’m in a position to help, Chef said. I’m sorry, Wes, but you’ll have to look for another house. Then Chef hugged Wes again, hitched his pants, and got in his big car and drove away.
    Wes came inside the house. He dropped his hat and gloves on the carpet and sat down in the big chair.
    Chef’s chair, it occurred to me. Chefs carpet, even. Wes looked pale. I poured two cups of coffee and gave one to him. It’s all right, I said. Wes, don’t worry about it, I said. I sat down on Chef’s sofa with my coffee.
    Fat Linda’s going to live here now instead of us, Wes said. He held his cup, but he didn’t drink from it.
    Wes, don’t get stirred up, I said.
    Her man will turn up in Ketchikan, Wes said. Fat Linda’s husband has simply pulled out on them. And who could blame him? Wes said. Wes said if it came to that, he’d go down with his ship, too, rather than live the rest of his days with Fat Linda and her kid. Then Wes put his cup down next to his gloves. This has been a happy house up to now, he said.
    We’ll get another house, I said.
    Not like this one, Wes said. It wouldn’t be the same, anyway. This house has been a good house for us.
    This house has good memories to it. Now Fat Linda and her kid will be in here, Wes said. He picked up his cup and tasted from it.
    It’s Chef’s house, I said. He has to do what he has to do.
    I know that, Wes said. But I don’t have to like it.
    Wes had this look about him. I knew that look. He kept touching his lips with his tongue. He kept thumbing his shirt under his waistband. He got up from the chair and went to the window. He stood looking out at the ocean and at the clouds, which were building up. He patted his chin with his fingers like he was thinking about something. And he was thinking.
    Go easy, Wes, I said.
    She wants me to go easy, Wes said. He kept standing there.
    But in a minute he came over and sat next to me on the sofa. He crossed one leg over the other and began fooling with the buttons on his shirt. I took his hand. I started to talk. I talked about the summer.
    But I caught myself talking like it was something that had happened in the past. Maybe years back. At any rate, like something that was over. Then I started talking about the kids. Wes said he wished he could do it over again and do it right this time.
    They love you, I said.
    No, they don’t, he said.
    I said, Someday, they’ll understand things.
    Maybe, Wes said. But it won’t matter then.
    You don’t know, I said.
    I know a few things, Wes said, and looked at me. I know I’m glad you came up here. I won’t forget you did it, Wes said.
    I’m glad, too, I said. I’m glad you found this house, I said.
    Wes snorted. Then he laughed. We both laughed. That Chef, Wes said, and shook his head. He threw us a knuckleball, that son of a bitch. But I’m glad you wore your ring. I’m glad we had us this time together, Wes said.
    Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
    Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case.
    Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?
    I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.
    He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not. I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me. But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?
    Wes, it’s all right, I said. I brought his hand to my cheek. Then, I don’t know, I remembered how he was when he was nineteen, the way he looked running across this field to where his dad sat on a tractor, hand over his eyes, watching Wes run toward him. We’d just driven up from California. I got out with Cheryl and Bobby and said, There’s Grandpa. But they were just babies.
    Wes sat next to me patting his chin, like he was trying to figure out the next thing. Wes’s dad was gone and our kids were grown up. I looked at Wes and then I looked around Chefs living room at Chefs things, and I thought, We have to do something now and do it quick.
    Hon, I said. Wes, listen to me.
    What do you want? he said. But that’s all he