But with a great gasp she rose, like a shot, by the near edge of the pool. She had gone the whole length and back. She leaned over onto the slate surround, hacking and coughing terribly. I rushed to her but she said weakly, “Something’s burning,” and I realized the porridge was probably boiling over onto the coils.
“Are you all right?” I asked her, and she nodded. I rushed back to the kitchen and took the pot off the burner, though by the time I returned to her she was sitting in the deck chair as I’ve described, with nothing so unusual about her except the slightest tinge of blue in her neck and face. And we sat that way for a while, neither of us having anything to eat or drink, just sitting and listening to the westerly breezes filtering through the first dry-edged leaves of the treetops.
At some point she said, “I suppose you’ll be leaving all of this to Sunny.”
“Yes,” I quickly replied, though of course I hadn’t really considered such things yet, as she was only fifteen at the time. But almost immediately the notion seemed more complicated than I expected, as my trouble with Sunny was deepening by the day, enough so that I’d begun to wonder whether she and I would have any relationship at all in the future, or if we did, what kind of feeling she would have for me when both of us were old. It was then I understood better what had upset Mary Burns about her daughter’s phone call. There is a need for the belief — even if illusory — that despite the ever-obvious evidence of familial messiness and complication, one’s child will always hold the most unconditional regard for her parent, the same one no doubt that Mary Burns felt her heart spill over with when she was handed her newborn daughter, and which I am sure washes over me whenever Thomas tugs my hand. We wish it somehow pure, this thing, we wish it unmixed, unalloyed with human hope or piety or fear or maybe even love. For we wish it not to be ornate.
And yet it always is. And when I tried to have Mary meet my gaze, so that I might show at least one momentary glimpse of what I could offer, she patently refused, sitting stolidly behind her shading sunglasses, her wide, thin mouth set with weariness and rigor. Soon enough she got up and slipped the towel from her waist, then quickly stepped into her loose athletic pants. I rose, too, and she hugged me tightly, and she kissed me on the ear and cheek, and held me fast once more, such that I was almost sure our day would simply resume. But she shouldered her jute bag and, smiling weakly, said without a trace of irony, “You’re a marvel, I think.” Then she spoke a barely audible goodbye. And then she walked around the house and was gone.
That was the last time I saw her up close. We spoke on the phone several times, but she was too well-bred and kind to be abrupt, despite the halting awkwardness of our conversations. She had an amazing discipline when it came to me. All I could think to bring up was what I was planning for my autumn garden, the certain coles and lettuces which were the same that year as every other.
Which, I’m thinking, as I slow my pace across the street from her old house, might in fact please her if she were still alive. Perhaps she would make fun and say it was my “habitation.” And I think I miss her, seeing the activity of the young family inside, the movements in the kitchen and the children’s rooms upstairs, the father in the paneled study watching Sunday golf on a large-screen television. I imagine this is more or less how it was for her twenty-five or thirty years ago, those times before her daughters grew up and Dr. Burns passed away and before she ever came upon me working in the front of my yard, the hours spent in those gently lighted rooms not necessarily ideal or happy but full at least with the thousand tiny happenings of her life.
It is those same notices, of course, that have never blessed my house. And as I make my way up the rise of the hill, it now comes fully into view, the staggered pointing of the chimneys, and the double steeples and bluish leaded panes, and the crossed beaming of the stuccoed Tudor style, my house a lovely, standing forgery, pristine enough and old enough that it passes most every muster. Liv Crawford could speak to these elements and others, and then point out the work invested in the grounds, the mature and various species of tree and shrub, the well-chosen perennials and annuals and judicious use of ornamental stones, the scale and shape and proportion of the entire site a realty dream come true, so that all one need do is simply move right in. And yet it seems nearly wrong that the next people will never know what sort of man walked the halls within, or know the presences of his daughter and his lady friend, or wonder about the other specters of his history. Of course I don’t wish them to be haunted. But if they might be somehow casually informed, whispered to that this man was nothing special or extraordinary but, as Mary Burns suggested, particular to himself, I would feel a certain sentence had been at least transferred, duly passed.
There’s a familiar car parked down the driveway near the garage, and when I step around to the back I see Liv Crawford on the patio, peering into the windows. I remain still for a few moments, to watch her looking in as she sizes up the results of her many restorations. She doesn’t seem the least bit covetous, only rather proud. I clear my throat and she wheels, her face beaming, and she floats forward with her arms open wide to embrace me as if I were her only child.
“Where were you, Doc?” she practically cries. “Your car was here and so I figured you went for a walk, but it’s been here over an hour. I don’t care because I had about a million calls to make from the car but I was getting worried. Where on earth did you go?”
“I have a new route,” I tell her. “To the village and the state park but then up past here, to the cemetery. You should have let yourself in. I don’t mind at all, you know. We didn’t have the appointments, did we?”
“That’s tomorrow,” she says, though checking her calendar book anyway.
“How many?”
“Just three of them, Doc. That’s all we’ll need to get it done. I’ve spoken to the parties again. They’re primed, ready for battle, and it looks like we’re going to be holding our own little auction by tomorrow night.”
“I do hope so, Liv.”
“Don’t worry, Doc. It’s already there. Truly. I’m the best.”
And so you are, I think, and mostly I’m content and happy that she’s back to her old self, Crawford Power and Light becoming operational again once Renny Banerjee left the hospital with an excellent prognosis for a full recovery. I haven’t been to visit him at his condo in several days, but I hear from him that he and Liv have been shopping for their matrimonial bed, each of theirs a bit too historied for the spending of restful nights. Like everyone else who has learned I’m about to sell my house, Renny was concerned that it should happen so soon, or at least before I’ve made any decisions about where I’ll go. Liv herself was dubious and hesitant to place it in her listings once she asked a few questions about my grand plans, but I insisted that she do, and when she kept balking I even threatened to call a rival agent at ERA.
“I’m kicking and screaming, Doc,” she replied, and then told me she’d bring over the paperwork for me to sign right away.
That was two weeks ago. In the interim Liv has come by nearly every day, noting all the last-second fixits and sending over workmen to replace some kitchen cabinet hinges and a light fixture, and touch up the chair moldings in the dining room and polish all the brass doorknobs in the house. She’s brought in a crew of professional landscapers as well, to tidy and manicure my admittedly derelict yard work of late, to clip and prune and then rake the lawns and beds of the first fallen leaves of the imminent season.