CHAPTER THREE
THE MOVEMENT OF THE clouds against the sun caused the light to change rapidly, disconcertingly, brightness briefly fading to a wintry dusk in the blink of an eye, a taste of the greater darkness that would soon encroach. The front door opened and the old man appeared on his doorstep. He was wearing a hooded jacket, but he still had his slippers on his feet. He trotted to the end of the path and stopped at the edge of his property, his toes lined up with the lawn, as though the sidewalk were a body of water and he was fearful of falling from the bank.
“Can I help you with something, son?” he called.
Son.
I crossed the street. He tensed slightly, wondering now if it had been such a good idea to confront a stranger after all. He glanced down at his slippers, probably thinking that he should have taken the time to put on his boots. He would have felt less vulnerable in boots.
Up close, I could see that he was seventy or more. He was a small, fragile-looking man and, I imagined, he had always been that way; he did not carry himself like one who had once been significantly bigger and fitter, yet he had enough inner strength and confidence to face down an unknown man who was staking out his home. There were men younger than he was who would simply have called the police. His eyes were brown and rheumy, but the skin on his face was relatively unwrinkled for someone of his age. It was especially taut around his eye sockets and cheekbones, giving the impression that his skin had begun to shrink, not loosen, against his skull.
“I once lived here, in this house,” I said.
Some of the wariness left him.
“You one of the Harrington boys?” he asked, squinting as he tried to identify me. There were marks on either side of his nose from the spectacles he usually wore. Perhaps he had decided to leave them inside in order to make himself appear less frail than he was.
“No, I’m not.”
I didn’t even know who the Harringtons were. The people who bought the house after we left were named Bildner. They were a young couple, with a baby daughter. But then, over a quarter of a century had passed since I had last seen the house. I had no idea how many times it might have changed hands over the years.
“Huh. What’s your name, son?”
And each time he said that word, I heard the echo of my father’s voice.
“Parker,” I said. “Charlie Parker.”
“Parker,” he repeated, chewing on the word as though it were a piece of meat of whose taste he remained uncertain. He blinked rapidly three times, and his mouth tightened in a kind of wince. “Yes, I know who you are now. My name’s Asa, Asa Durand.”
He held out his hand, and I shook it.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Twelve years, give or take. The Harringtons were here before us, but they sold it and moved to Dakota. Don’t know if it was North or South. Don’t suppose it matters much, seeing as how it was Dakota.”
ldqtri‘th="5%"uo;You been to Dakota?”
“Which one?”
“Either.”
He smiled mischievously, and I saw clearly the young man now trapped in an old man’s body. “Why would I want to go to Dakota?” he asked. “You want to come inside?”
I heard myself say the words before I even realized I had made the decision.
“Yes,” I said, “if it’s not an imposition.”
“Not at all. My wife will be home soon. She plays bridge on Sunday afternoons, and I cook dinner. You’re welcome to stay, if you’re hungry. It’s pot roast. Always pot roast on Sundays. It’s the only thing I can cook.”
“No, thank you. It’s good of you to offer, though.”
I walked alongside him up the garden path. His left leg dragged slightly.
“What do you get in return for cooking dinner, or am I allowed to ask?”
“An easier life,” said Durand. “To sleep in my bed without fear of suffocation.” The smile came again, soft and warm. “And she likes my pot roast, and I like it that she does.”
We reached the front door. Durand went ahead and held it open. I paused on the step for a moment, then followed him inside, and he closed the door behind me. The hallway was brighter than I remembered. It had been painted yellow with white trim. When I was a boy, the hallway had been red. To the right was a formal dining room, with a mahogany table and chairs not dissimilar to the set we had once owned. To the left was the living room. There was a flat-screen high-definition TV where our old Zenith used to stand, in the days when VCRs were still a novelty and the networks had instituted a family hour to protect the young from sex and violence. When was that—’74, ’75? I couldn’t recall.
There was no longer a wall between the kitchen and the living room. It had been removed to create a single, open-plan space, so that the little kitchen of my youth, with its four-seat table, was now entirely gone.
I could not picture my mother in the new space.
“Different?” asked Durand.
“Yes. This is all different.”
“The other people did that. Not the Harringtons, the Bildners. They the ones you sold to?”
“That’s right.”
“It was vacant for a time too. Couple of years.” He looked away, troubled by the direction the conversation was taking. “Would you like a drink? There’s beer, if you want. I don’t drink it so much now. Goes through me like water down a pipe. Hardly in one end before it’s out the other. Then I have to nap.”
“It’s a little early for me. I’ll take a cup of coffee, though, if I don’t have to drink it alone.”
“Coffee we can do. At least I don’t have to nap after it.”
He switched on an ancient, stained coffeemaker, then rounded up some cups and spoons.
“Would you mind if I looked in my old bedroom?” I asked. “It’s the small one in the front, with the broken pane.”
Durand winced again, and looked a little embarrassed. “Damned pane. Kids broke it playing baseball. I just didn’t get around to fixing it. And then, well, we don’t use that room for much other than storage. It’s full of boxes.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d still like to see it.”
He nodded, and we went upstairs. I stood at the threshold of my old bedroom, but I did not enter. As Durand had said, it was a mass of boxes, files, books, and old electrical equipment that was now gathering dust.
“I’m a packrat,” said Durand apologetically. “All that stuff still works. I keep hoping someone will come along who might need it and take it off my hands.”
As I stood there, the boxes disappeared, vanishing along with the junk and the books and the files. There was only a room carpeted in gray; white walls covered with pictures and posters; a closet with a mirror on the front in which I could see myself reflected, a man in his forties with graying hair and dark eyes; shelves lined with books, carefully ordered according to author; a nightstand with a digital alarm clock, the height of technology, showing a time of 12:54 P.M.
And the sound of the gunshot carrying from the garage at the back of the house. Through the window, I saw men running— “Are you okay, Mr. Parker?”
Durand touched my arm gently. I tried to speak, but I could not.
“Why don’t we go downstairs? I’ll make you that cup of coffee.”
And the figure in the mirror became the ghost of the boy I once was, and I held his gaze until he slowly faded away and was gone.