“I think Oscar Wilde said it first, and more eloquently,” Lance said, keeping his face straight. John stared at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. John had a rolling chuckle that exuded warmth, and Lance imagined that even if the other man had been actually laughing at someone, the butt of the joke would’ve been helpless not to join in. Lance grinned at the elderly man’s mirth, feeling his endearment grow where there had only been anger before. John’s laughter faded and his face became sober again.
“All I can say is keep a sharp eye out, and I’ll keep my ears open if there’s something going on in town that I’m unaware of. I’m sorry I don’t have any answers for you, son. I wish I did, I really do. My wife used to say I was a lift in the shoe of the world. She said I always tried to make things right where I had no business doing so. ‘Let things be as they are, Jonathan,’ she used to say.” Lance watched John’s face darken at the mention of his wife. “I used to tell her I only wanted to help. Maybe that’s why I took to caretaking so well, making sure other people’s homes were set, sometimes before my own was.” Lance watched John wade through the mire of his thoughts. After a time, the older man seemed to emerge and rejoin his guest in the present, the vestiges of the past slipping away to merge with the growing shadows of the yard.
“Well, what say we have some dinner? I’m hungry as a lion in a cornfield.” John stood and walked haltingly into the house, arthritis faltering his meaningful stride.
“Can I do anything?” Lance asked, standing from his chair as he held his empty beer bottle.
“No, just burning a couple steaks on the grill if that’s okay with you,” John said, turning before he crossed the threshold of the house.
“That’s great. Could I possibly use your bathroom?” Lance asked. The two beers he had consumed pressed painfully against his bladder.
“Second door on the right, off the living room,” John said, pointing as he disappeared through the opening to the house.
Lance followed John through the sliding glass door and shut it behind him, closing out the warmth of the summer evening. He watched the caretaker make his way into the kitchen and begin loading several thick steaks onto a glass platter near the sink.
The hallway that led from the living room was narrow and dim, and the four doorways were dark rectangles branching off in different directions. As he walked, Lance realized a feeling of relief had settled upon him since entering John’s home. The guilt he had been harboring since their morning encounter had evaporated. The relief was so absorbing that he didn’t notice when he mistakenly turned the knob of the first door on the right and opened the door to John’s bedroom.
Immediately he realized his error, but couldn’t help noticing several empty whiskey bottles, lined up like soldiers near the foot of the double bed in the center of the room. A few full bottles were mixed among them, their amber liquid almost black in the low light. Lance frowned and started to shut the door, feeling as if he had just looked through someone’s window from the outside and seen them naked. The bottles didn’t seem at home there, and he had no doubt they had been placed there temporarily.
A picture propped on the dresser near the door caught his eye as he retreated, and he paused. A much younger version of the man fussing behind him in the kitchen was holding a woman with curly blond hair; his arms were wrapped around her as though he were afraid she would diffuse at any moment and slip away. The woman, in turn, held a boy around twelve years of age. The boy was laughing, his eyes focused on something other than the camera, and Lance could see an incongruity in his expression that suggested an accident or a disability of some sort. The family in the picture seemed the embodiment of happiness, and in that moment Lance recognized the silence of the house around him for what it truly was: grief. Mourning held a different kind of quiet. The simple lack of sound only roughly resembled the silence of grieving. When studied, the two were as dissimilar as tears and water.